A look back to the summer of 2020

 I haven't been enthusiastic about taking photos lately, grief + depression = Jim is not a happy bunny. Rather than miss another week I decided to have a look back at some macro photography I did in July 2020 with my Nikon D700, my Tamron AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 and a few shots with my Nikkor AF 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6 D. I have probably spoken about these photos previously, but I found a foIder I had not touched from July 29th 2020. I also have the new Affinity Photo 2 photo editing software and I set about getting used to it by going through the folder.

The summer of 2020 will go down in history as the year Covid-19 shut the world down. It didn't stop my photography habit as I took the opportunity to get stuck into B&W film and I also took my Nikon D700 out too. It was during a walk on this particular day that I found a patch of thistles which were awash with insects. I stowed my film camera away, took my D700 out of my bag, fitted my Tamron AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 that has 1:2 macro on the long end, found a nice spot and waited for the butterfly's to come to me.

I spent quite a while in that spot as I watched the insects go about their foraging. I only know the names of one or two butterflies and had to research the ones I photographed. There was a Peacock butterfly, a Hedge Brown and a few more besides. I tried to catch some Bees feeding from the thistles too.

I really had to be patient as the Bees were quicker than me, but I soon figured it out. On my way home I also got a few photos of the horses including the Mare who has been slowly getting used to the strange human with the clicking box thing. She didn't know what to make of me at first, but we are friends now.   

When I went home I downloaded the images to my computer and promptly forgot about them. D'oh! I found the file recently whilst looking for something else and the memories of the day started to return. It also coincided with the good folks at Seriff releasing the 2nd generation of their splendid photo editing suite which they have named Affinity Photo 2. 

It didn't take me long to sort through the photos and edit the Raw files, Affinity Photo 2 is much faster than its predecessor and I was able to have a selection of images ready to upload to this blog for you all to enjoy. As always I have placed them and more in an album on Flickr you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

Nikon D700 - Tamron AF 70-300mm and Nikkor 24-120mm D 29th July 2020