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I was so impressed with the colours of this Angelfish I forgot to note down it's species type

The most disturbing fungus, not just visually but the smell was quite unpleasant and very strong, which one could detect from several feet away. Fortunately I didn't need to get any closer as it was very large and my 90mm Macro lens meant I could keep a fair distance away

This shot was taken at 1/15 sec while panning with the movement of the fish, it turned out very well I think

Autumn 2006 approaches, the leaves are getting brown and cherries fall to the ground. I love the browns in this scene, with a slight splash of green and that radiant red

I got very lucky with my timing, I managed to catch this snake eating its lunch, a nice, juicy white mouse

A UK common garden wasp

The trailing length of the top fin must be for show, but it somehow goes with the strange snout on this fish

Some umbrella shaped fungus

Summer finally arrived in 2005 and down the local park the wild life was making up for lost time

I actually bought this Lily specifically for photography, I took a variety of shots, this close-up, with tweaked colour curves is quite abstract and interesting I think

A very small and cute monkey, fast moving and very photogenic

Here a slug digs into a tasty mushroom, now you know why some mushrooms have chunks missing, slugs have been taking a nibble

In the dark, humid and hot lizard house the animals moved much slower but one needs a longer exposure, by the time I had got this shot I was wiping my forehead to prevent moisture dripping on the camera - a very camera hostile environment, but the lizard posed so how could I refuse the shot

I really wanted to get two bees in the same shot, one flying and one collecting pollen, it took a lot of failed shots but I finally got this one. This is one reason I like digital cameras so much, no film waste, no expense, as a hobby photographer I could not have afforded to get this shot using film, even with very careful timing the bees move around too quickly - perhaps on a colder day, but that has its own problems and limits

Possibly some kind of Cichlid, a small almost pouting mouth, I really liked the blue colour of the body with that splash of yellow on its fins

6th April 2008 and we had a heavy snow fall here in North London, with beautiful, if short lived results

This giant fungus was growing out of the side of the tree trunk near its base, a fairy tale kind of photo

In my local park, this herron enjoys the New River in a gap between the rain on a mostly dull summer day

A dragon fly in Thailand. Taken with my Nikon Coolpix 3100, a great little machine but the lack of a manual mode meant I found it very difficult to get the right exposure for this shot, also the camera was having difficult focusing on the dragon fly, eventually I had to trick it by focusing on my hand then re-framing to the dragon fly at the same distance

August 2007 was a bit of a damp squib as far as summer went in the UK, but I did some lovely shots of dandelion clocks caught on thistles

I think these creatures are amazing both photographically and nature-wise. This day was very breezey so I had to use just my flash, set to high-speed sync, for illumination which explains the dark background in this shot

I saw this bee hanging by just one leg from this plant, it stayed there for quite some time, presumably resting

A bee gathering it's bounty

A tasty drink for this quite large butterfly

With the warm wet autumn of 2006 mushrooms were plentiful, as you can see from this panoramic I took in Epping Forest

I like making panoramics and this scene was just crying out to be made one, a whole community of fungi

I put a few crystals of sugar down and sure enough a short while later the ants had found the treat and were busy taking it back to their nest. I converted this to monochrome as I think it gives the image a more worker feel. Look in the hard nature link in Nature for more a disturbing view of ants

Not a clown fish but a funny face nevertheless

With this bright colour you can be sure this little chap is probably highly poisonous. I like the voyeuristic style of this shot and took it so the leaves complimented the shape and direction of the frog

Taking photos in Zoos can be very difficult with cages, bars, glass and people getting in the way and personally I only like natural looking shots. So here at Paradise Wildlife Park I waited for the otters to adopt a good grouping in a suitable position in their enclosure, I think this one worked very well

An amazing bold splash of colour, obviously seeking attention. My Coolpix 3100 captured this splash of colour brilliantly

A Rose to be

More umbrellas at various stages of life

These ants found a slug and are in the process of taking it back to their nest, it was gone a few hours after this shot was taken but I am not sure if it was taken whole or in pieces, best not ot think about it really. I have saturated the colours of the slug to highlight its distress - nature is not all fluffy bunnies and flowers, it can be really very harsh

It was a very windy day with quickly changing light conditions, bad conditions for macro shooting but the scene which confronted me just required to be shot, so I ramped my 7D up to ISO1600 kept the aperture as open as possible for a fast shutter speed but closed for more depth of field given the movement in the scene and managed to grab a few amazing shots of this spider trapping this cranefly, really amazing. The cranefly struggled desperately to get free and managed to get its wings and all but two of its legs free in a mamouth 30 minute struggle, but its fate was sealed as the spider crawled all over its captive trapping it in a web

Taken on a cold and frosty morning. With all the white and dark in the frame I was worried about over or under exposure, so I set my trusty little Nikon Coolpix 3100 to it's most manual mode, exposed for the biggest leaf to the left and re-framed to take the shot, worked out well I think. This was also my first published photograph, click here to see the book at Amazon

I waited patiently during the winter months researching the best places to find bluebells, here is a small wood near Chorleywood with a beautiful carpet of bluebells. I took over 100 shots including macros and wide panoramas but I really like this square view of the forest made from 2 joined, portrait shots

With my new Minolta 7D and Tamron 90mm Macro I was able to capture this amazing shot of a bee taking a nibble of some pollen

This butterfly actually has transparent wings, nature is amazing

A local robin nested near our kitchen door, and two babies were the result, this is the second before it could fly

Using a very wide aperture (F2.8) on my 90mm Macro I threw the background out of focus to produce this wonderfully dreamy affect

It never ceases to amaze me how Jellyfish survive, let alone have lethal species

Taken at the London Butterfly House, Syon Park, in their small but interesting insect room. This was a difficult shot, hand held in low light that proved the worth of the anti-shake system of my Minolta 7D, using my Tamron 90mm macro wide open at f2.8, 1/10 sec at ISO1600 and no flash as the arthropod was behind glass

The blue on this dragonfly (Enallagma cyathigerum - Common Blue Damselfly) was a stunning contrast to the rather dull water and lush green vegetation

Taken at the London Butterfly House, Syon Park, in their small but interesting insect room. This was a difficult shot, hand held in low light that proved the worth of the anti-shake system of my Minolta 7D, using my Tamron 90mm macro wide open at f2.8, 1/5 sec at ISO1600 and no flash as the amphibian was behind glass

This is a mummified daddy-long-legs (Cranefly - Tipula paludosa), captured in a spider web

There's no way you could make a joke about one of these, with razor sharp serrated edge teeth which are replaced throughout their lives, these are born hunters

While in the amazon we went fishing for Piranha, we used raw meat as the bait and they snapped it up. Take it from me, do not go for a swim in Piranha infested waters, especially if you are bleeding as they will eat you up

With the autumn season approaching I went out looking for some good fungus pictures, here are some classically shaped button mushrooms, but I wouldn't risk eating one

A ladder of fungus on a dead tree trunk

I am hoping to get a good Robin photo in the frost or snow, but this will do for now. I was out for 3 hours on this morning and this was the only worthwhile shot I came back with. I just need the right weather, snow that is, for the perfect Robin shot

This curious squirrel hung on to the tree and stared at me for quite some time giving me the chance to get some good shots of it. I originally went out to get some birds but apart from fleeting glimpses of our feathered friends and plenty of noise, I couldn't find a single one

This duck was caught having just taken off from a partly frozen lake. Although I like the shot it does show the consistent lack of sharp focus in my cheap telephoto lens, time to invest in a better one I think

As my technique for closeup improves, and experience with wildlife grows, I can get ever closer to subjects like butterflies. This one was taken with my 7D, Tamron 90mm Macro lens with a Vivitar 1.4x teleconverter, but even then it was getting in really close which allowed me to get the detail I wanted in this shot. The image here is very reduced for the web, but viewing the original you can see the scales on the butterflies wings, it's amazing

Not quite a pet, but I like a few small spiders in the house as they clean up other insects

I went out to get some bees flying, more difficult than it may seem as they are very fast moving, especially Bumble Bees. Finally I managed to get a few good, sharp shots using my 35mm F2 + 1.4x teleconverter and a flash set to high speed sync. The best shots came out around F9 which gave me enough depth of field to catch the bees zig-zagging around the plants while still remaining in the focus field I had set. I pre-focused the lens as autofocus could not handle the bees small size and high speed

This small fish has beautiful fins and seemed to be very social, but I was so intent on getting its photo I completely forgot to note the species type, so if anyone out there knows please mail me

According to old aerodynamic equations bees cannot fly, this bee seemed to managed perfectly well even with damaged wings

This Viper is something you would not want to see coming at you if you had just sat down to take a stone out of your shoe. I was safe as this chap was behind glass, but it was at London Zoo where a certain Mr Harry Potter made the glass vanish and let one of the snakes out

I spent most of my childhood watching superb wildlife documentaries by David Attenborough so this photo does not shock me (too much), but I still felt like I was intruding a little

I really enjoy taking macro shots with my Tamron 90mm and this abstract of a flower is very soothing

Another butterfly, with amazing patterns and colours

These spikey ones are clearly social, look closely and you will see a whole community of them

Using my 70-210mm F4 plus 1.4 teleconverter I was able to get close enough for this shot, but the weather was overcast and very breezy so I had to use high-speed sync flash to get enough depth of field plus a high enough shutter speed to freeze the motion caused by the wind. Getting a sharp image was very difficult as I had quite a narrow depth of field and the wind kept blowing the damselfly in and out of my focus field. I had to take a lot of shots to get a good one

While I was out trying to find more Damselflys I came across a Moorhen chick basking in the sunshine. Fortunately I had my 75-300 with a 1.4x teleconverter so I managed to get some very closeup images. It helped that being young it had not learned to fear humans yet so I managed to get within a few yards of it anyhow, I took about 100 shots of this ultra cute chick, here is one of my personal favourites

While walking to my local park I saw these tulips posing for a photo which seems more like art. It was an overcast day so I set the white balance on my 7D to make the most of the colours, I have also played with the colours on my computer, perhaps I over did it :)

On the same icy cold day as the previous shot, these beautiful Swans still glided through the cold water with grace and never strayed very far from each other

An impossibly fragile fungus reaches for the sky, although it's stalk was incredibly tiny and stood little chance if hit by something, anything, it still made the attempt to grow, an attempt for life

After some searching I found this monster, which caught the Cranefly above

Small fungus on a tree trunk

Of course butterflies are what the Butterfly House is really about and I got hundreds of great images (I stayed for more than 4 hours even though the suggested time to view is only 45 minutes), trying to pick just a few is very difficult, but this one of a large white one feeding is impressive as it was technically very difficult as well as being an imposing shot. It was a very dark October day and needed 1/30 sec at F4 at ISO400 on my 90mm Tamron macro lens, no flash

A transparent spider, my little Coolpix had a hard time locking onto this elusive spider but the shot worked well

The small drops of rain on this leaf acted like a magnifying glass, beautiful

Insects on a blue plant (possibly a Heavenly Blue, lithosperm), perhaps having a chat. This photo is also one of mine which got published, take a look at Amazon

I love the way this squirrel seems to be sniffing the air

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