I have written several wordy articles recently... and to be honest my brain could with a rest haha!
I wrote recently about upgrading to a new Full Frame camera earlier this year, and that was followed by a discussion of my first attempt at using it shortly afterwards. A quick summary of that first attempt was that results looked promising, but I needed more practice.
Last week my partner and I headed to an undisclosed location down in deepest, darkest Nottinghamshire. You've guessed it... we were searching for more butterflies again. And while we were collecting records, it was the perfect opportunity for me to get some more pictures.
This time I made a point of only taking my new camera (Canon 5Dmk2) in the hope that it would force me to get to grips with it...
Southern Hawker Dragonfly (Aeshna cyanea)
And withing minutes of arriving, this gorgeous Dragonfly flew lazily over our heads and chose to perch on a branch (twig?) just a couple of metres away.
Southern Hawker Dragonfly (Aeshna cyanea)
We often see these whizzing overhead in full predator mode, so to have the chance to get close to one of these at rest was pretty cool!
Brown Argus (Aricia agestis)
Then the Butterflies began to appear, first with this little Brown Argus...
Peacock (Aglais io) and Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae)
...and then we had a Peacock and a Small Tortoiseshell appearing to squabble over the same patch of leaf. Evidently all the guidelines about social distancing have been forgotten... disgraceful behaviour from the pair of them haha
Time for a quick (and fairly generic) landscape shot. Referring back to my earlier post, this image looked crap on the back of the camera. However I learnt my lesson from the last time and trusted the camera to do its job and now its back on the laptop I can see that it looks pretty good.
I have just noticed the lens distortion though. If you look at the line where the field of wheat meets the sky on the horizon, there is a very slight curve to it. This is a result of using the lens at its widest zoom (24mm) and is a useful reminder for me to keep an eye out for this effect when editing future images
Comma Butterfly (Polygonia c-album)
Back to butterflies, this is a Comma. A very distinctive butterfly with those crinkled, scalloped edges to its wings. It gets its English (or vernacular) name from the small white comma-shaped mark on the underside of its hindwing.
Common Blue Butterflies (Polyommatus icarus)
Brown Argus Butterflies (Aricia agestis)
And then here are a pair of Brown Argus mating. Always nice to see these, and its easy to get close to them when they are in this position.
Thanks to 
I'll end this set with an image of my partner, seen here with a clipboard for doing the butterfly count, and a camera hanging off her shoulder. A pretty decent Photographer (she is better than I am for starters...) and she also draws and paints too. She does have a website which you are welcome to check out, and I keep telling her to join the Hive revolution!
No luck yet but I'll keep trying!
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the images and found them vaguely interesting. It appears that even though I aimed for a quick post tonight I have still managed over 500 words without much effort lol. I guess I will be adding this to the 500 Words a Day Comunity created by 