Spring Flowers

A few recent floral shots:-

Violet:

Primrose:

Three-cornered Leek:

Cuckoo Flower:

Blackthorn (I think):

Cherry blossom:

Daffodil:

Forget-me-not:

Woodland Impressions

In my local park, there are a few small areas of semi-natural woodland, with an attractive ground flora in Spring consisting of carpets of Ramsons and Bluebells, with smaller numbers of other flowers such as violets, primroses, etc. Difficult to get a pleasing photo of these woods due to their parkland location and the number of paths and litter-bins nearby, so I went for an 'impressionistic' effect with these two pictures - by moving the camera up or down during an exposure of about one second:-

Ramson woodland:

Bluebell woodland:

I then took some more conventional photos of the local flowers:-

Red Campion:

Violet:

Bluebell:

Ramsons:

Pennard Again

Visited Pennard Cliffs on Gower again today:

Weather was sunny, but surprisingly cool, with a cold northerly wind, although a little less hazy than on Sunday. I walked along towards Three Cliffs Bay:

I was hoping to see the Lesser Whitethroat that I had seen in some scrub near Three Cliffs on Sunday. It was there alright, and was singing heartily, but from deep within some bushes, and was not going to emerge to let me photograph him. It was unusually birdless on the gorse-topped cliffs, which usually hold Stonechats, Dartford Warblers, and plenty of Whitethroats, amongst some commoner species. All I saw of note were a few Choughs, a single singing Whitethroat (no decent pics), and a Kestrel. A handful of Ravens patrolled the cliff edges, as usual.

Looking to return home with some pictures (however bad!) to show for my little jaunt, I resorted to fitting an extension tube to my wide-angle lens (a Canon 17-40 mm f/4), and trying a few close-ups of the small flowers that studded the short turf. This involved grovelling on the ground, and handholding my lens just a few inches from the blooms, and attempting to depict them within their environment by using a smallish aperture to gain a reasonable depth of field. Not sure if they work too well, but it was worth a try! Here are a few: