A slow few weeks

Well, I've had a holiday and not really been getting outside enough too much in the last few weeks.  The weather's too hot... wouldn't you agree?  Roll on autumn!  However, I got out yesterday evening to the local nature reserve to see a peaceful, calm and windless evening.  The sun was casting light down over the reed beds so I attempted to photograph a pair of swans over the far side of the lake.

One of the Swans in the evening light

When processing this image, I reduced the exposure a tad, upped the contrast and clarity, played around with levels, added a vingette, alterred the colour balance, too.  To finish off, I added a high pass filter to the Swan and removed some chromatic aberration where the white plumage met the darker background.

The other day, I went to photograph some Bees at a local church.  I had spotted this flowering bush had a lot of bees on it a while ago but now was the time to go and give it a go.  So, I remembered to pack the macro lens (I usually forget, you see!) and had to use the flash as I was photographing just after a rain shower which was good because there weren't too many bees there when I arrived but when I left, there was a good number to pick and choose from!

Honey Bee

When photographing the Bees, I had to use the flash as the sun was not able to break through the clouds.  I spent a good half hour trying to get a reasonable shot with a good purple background rather than a green foliage background as I found that this didn't look as pleasing to the eye.

I hope that you like these photos and all comments and criticisms are welcome.

Matt