My day with the professionals looking for Orchids

First I must say what a wonderful day today was, not only was the sun shining but Ian took me out for a really posh meal at The Cottage in Kegworth to celebrate our 40 years of married life together. Who would have thought  40 years ago that we would still be together today especially as so many marriages break up after a few years. So hubby of mine, thank you for the time we have had together and heres hoping for many more years to come. professionals

So lets get back to yesterday. The meeting at the photo workshop for the Orchid walk was a couple of miles south of  Tideswell in the Peak district. After a brief introduction to what to expect from the day, 5 of us and two instructors set of for the three mile hike around the peaks. First thing very evident was the lack of Orchids. Due to the exceptionally cold spring only a few had put in an apperance. These few were all pounced on and photographed to nearly an inch of their lives. The rest of the walk concentrated more on landscape photography and this is were I felt a complete novice. Only myself and one other chap had what the instructors called a bridge camera, all the rest having a super doper, all singing all dancing SLR jobbies with lenses calore, filters, tripods etc etc. I felt like a fish out of water and although they tried to explain to me about depth of field, iso's, shutter speeds, apertures and loads of jargon to do with focusing, it all went straight over my head. I did what I think I do best and concentrated on my macro lens and small flowers. This did impress the instructors especially when I showed them the results on the big screen at the end of the walk. Because I'm desparate to find out what my camera can do I have booked myself onto another of their courses which will hopefully explain to me what they tried to explain on the walk. So here are some of my photos.

Purple Orchid

There was no end of talk about lighting, clouds etc and how a picture should have a beginning, middle and end. They liked a photo to lead you through it and a definite no no is to have something smack bang in the middle.

One of the instructors asked me to take this picture below, then she took my camera and took another photo of the same scene of what she thought would make a better picture. I think you will agree that mine is rubbish compared to hers!

Mine

The instructors

 I was praised, though, for these macro photos. In fact the instructors were pretty amazed!

Bumble Bee on a Cowslip flower

Tiny viola ground plant

And amongst the moss was this slug, it was no bigger then half a matchstick. My macro lens couldn't focus on the whole slug only part of it.

Flower bud amongst the moss