The Creatures of the Waterhouse

There are two main types of image I tend to take in environments like the Waterhouse Plantation, especially when I’m going through a creative dry spell. The first are ones like those I posted yesterday: landscapes or still lives made interesting by image composition or post-processing. The second is of things happening, such as wildlife flitting past.

The squirrel above actually posed for this shot. He stopped and held this position until I took a picture, and then he ran off.

In another part of the plantation, there was a large bush which was, and there is only one way to describe this, COVERED IN BEEEES.

So, I swapped out to a macro lens to try to get some gratuitous bee shots.

This one looks like a ickle baby bee:

This one escaped, but I liked the result:

I was shooting at f/16 in order to try to have a chance at keeping the subjects in focus. The Canon EF f/2.8 100mm Macro can have a razor thin depth of field at its closest focus, and with the fast moving little buggers I wanted to try and make sure I could get at least one decent sharp closeup of one of them.

It wasn’t just bees, there was one of these things, which I had no idea what it was until CJ Trigg Photography photographed one last week and seemed to know what it was: a damsel fly.

I had originally assumed that the damsel fly was some sort of dragonfly. Can you blame me? It fits most of the description. Big wings, long thin body. Getting as close as calling it a dragonfly is pretty impressive for me.

I am also assuming that this is a dragonfly, but I couldn’t get close enough for a decent identification.

I love the bokeh in this image. Not quite as soft as if I’d had access to a bigger aperture, but it’s come out pretty well.

At this point, I attempted to get a bit closer to get a better look at the creature – which is when I was spotted.

I tried to get even closer, but I scared him off.

It wasn’t just creepy crawlies at the plantation. There were also bigger things afoot, like this gansta squirrel.

Word.

Now, if you’ve read this blog before you might be aware that I’m quite partial to photographing squirrels. I’ve encountered some incredibly tame squirrels in my time.

This one, however, is evil, and apparently plotting something.

The most common kind of wildlife at the Plantation is… well, based on the times I’ve been there, it’s small children. Or bees. There’s also some birdlife there – mainly ducks, admittedly – but this time, I found a heron. I tried to get closer to get a better shot, but I spooked it, and I as it flew off I tried to capture it, but with such a fast moving target with a bright background my camera had trouble locking on to it.

And with that, he was gone.

This was the collection of wildlife I captured on the day – if anyone from the RSPCA is reading, yes, I mean ‘captured’ as in photographed, I definitely am in NO WAY WHATSOEVER attempting to assemble and train a squirrel army. Mainly because the damned things are too cute and friendly and don’t really listen to orders.

When we return to the Plantation, we’ll be looking at attempting to recreate past glories.