It is amazing this nature thing. Just amazing. It must be 4 weeks since I was last at the Narborough Bog and what a change. The last time I was there the bog was still underwhelming, things had started to grow but not by that much. Now well it's a jungle out there. I was walking through the reeds this morning and had a sudden cold shiver going down my back. Suddenly I felt I was in Jurassic Park and the reeds were filled with Velociraptor - they are that tall. I am over 6 feet tall and they tower over me - quite spooky.
One of things that comes with this prodigious growth are all the creepy crawlies. These were what I was interested in - well actually the dragonflies, damselflies and butterflies. Again, this didn't disappoint. Whilst the larger dragonflies buzz by too quickly to capture (at the moment) the damselflies and butterflies are another matter. Once you follow the path deep into the reed bed then you are surrounded by hundreds of the creatures. Providing you are fairly still then you can approach them really quite close. Now I am new to this branch of photography so everything is snapped - the 1D really comes into its own. I have been following the advice of Colin Smith FRPS (in the latest issue of IRIS) and shot everything at a high ISO so that I get everything as frozen as possible. On the whole this is working but I suspect there is far more to things than that. Only time will tell.
Tomorrow I'm off to Wicken fen so hopefully some of the lessons I have learnt locally can be applied to one of the best places to see dragonflies. Lets see what the results will be.
One final thing - identification. What a complicated thing this is turning out to be. As I write this I am surrounded by all sorts of reference books used to ID the creatures. Again this should get easier as time goes on - well lets hope so.
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