Bee on oregano flowers

We cultivate oregano for the attraction its flowers have for insect life: bees, moths and butterflies find it as attractive as buddleia and verbena (which we also grow). Photographing bees the other day I got this photograph. It's not the best I've ever taken, but I particularly liked the dreamy way the macro lens rendered the out of focus areas.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Out of focus necklace

On a sunny afternoon I decided to do a little macro photography and, after experimenting with a few household articles to no good effect, I turned to my standby on such occasions - my wife's jewellery box. I knew there were a few new necklaces since I last looked so I took some shots of them. Once again to no good effect. Then I remembered that it was a long time since I'd taken any deliberately out of focus photographs. So that's what I did. The best of my efforts is above. The subject is, essentially, a coil of a string of graduated black ball bearings that are biggest at the centre of the necklace and getting smaller at each end.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Hawthorn berries 2

Continuing from the previous post, I have to say that the prominence of hawthorn berries this year is not only due to the favourable spring providing the conditions necessary for flowers to convert into berries. A further factor is the way the leaves seem to have departed the trees well before the berries have begun to drop or been eaten by birds. These berries were on a bush by the River Ribble and the dark background of the shaded water emphasised their redness very well.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Votive candles

It seems to me that votive candles are much more commonly seen in parish churches than formerly. The practice of buying a candle, lighting it and praying or simply thinking has had a resurgence for reasons that I can't work out. In cathedrals and larger churches that actively invite visitors they have been a continuing presence, flickering points of light in the darkness of the interiors. Today's examples were in Gloucester Cathedral. My snap demonstrates that even a one inch sensor can offer a shallow depth of field and reasonable out of focus effects when it is coupled with a bright f1.8 lens.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Sony DSC-RX100