The last few weeks I’ve been limited to the distance I can go due to health, so creating landscape photography content has been a little challenging and sparse.

So i challenged myself to take something a little different, with a cheap lens that’s not made for the job in hand..

Don’t get me wrong, I have some beautiful locations to photograph on my doorstep but locally there’s a vast number of photographers taking photographs and sharing all very similar images.

Now this isn’t going to be macro at its finest. But the intention was to show, you don’t need the best macro lens or best camera body … to create some macro inspired content. And Head out into the wild and capture some wildlife, well, the small creatures that are out this time of year.

Now, this would have been made simple with a macro lens but sadly last year I broke my lens and due to other factors health wise and money wise I’ve not been able to replace it. So this is the perfect chance to do this challenge.

Also I set myself a few obstacles. Had to be in walking distance of my home, Lens and camera choice had to be light and able to fit in my hoodie pouch.. so I opted to take my Sony ZV-E10 camera body a 24 mp crop sensor camera and use a 16-50mm lens f3.5-5.6 PZ this made a perfect pocket sized mini kit. Not sure it will make for perfect critter capturing, but we’ll see.. keep reading 😉

So with the kit set I headed out for a short stroll to the local nature reserve. It’s about a five minute walk from my house so perfect local location.

It’s not a big place in fact the part I headed to you can walk around it in about ten minutes there’s a bigger part you can walk that would take about an hour round trip but as I say I just wanted to head out for a short stroll.

With the mixed weather we’ve been getting the last few weeks the vegetation and plant life doesn’t know if it’s coming, going, been or gone.. so I thought this could be a wasted journey but I was pleasantly surprised.

I walked through the metal gate to be greeted by long grass and lots of colourful, dare I say flowers.. vegetation and a lot of buzzing sounds. Could I be lucky and capture some bees about their business.

Well I took the camera out and just as I did a buff-tailed bumblebee buzzed past me and landed about five feet from me on a beautiful magenta plant – could I get an image in the bag this quick.. so I set the camera to 50mm (75mm as crop sensor) f9 1000/s and because of the f9 had to use a 1000 iso .. and took a chance I got down low and took the shot..

Looking at the back of the camera I was surprised, I had captured a very clean and pretty decent looking shot. Here’s that picture !

Don’t think it was too bad for the first shot of the day.. and as he took off right after I clicked the shutter leaving me with only a single shot . Some might say a fleeting moment captured…

Now to get up and look for more. When you enter the “nature reserve” you have about ten feet of entrance and then you’re greeted by a hedge with two openings kind of an in and out so to speak.

The hedge blocks your view of the rest of the small reserve. Annoyingly, the last time I was there the grass had been cut and there wasn’t much in the way of a meadow, but as I rounded the dividing shrubbery I was greeted with a meadow of greens, yellows and magenta blooms, a number of butterflies and because of the medium sized pond that’s engulfed in reeds and long grass there were a few breeds of dragonfly fleeting about. There were also a lot of honey bees and even more buff-tailed bumblebees .

If I’m honest this type of photography doesn’t come easy for me. I don’t have the steadiest of hands at the best of times hence why my settings are high when it comes to shutter speed. That and with the speed some of these critters move I thought it would be best to shoot fast.

Let’s get back to walking around the nature reserve. So, where was I?

Having been happy to see that there was life and a flowering meadows I started walking and looking for more opportunities which thankfully didn’t take too long before something caught my eye. Something I haven’t seen much of on my travels the last few years.

Numbers of butterflies locally have been pretty low.

This butterfly was eye catching in fact it wasn’t alone, this picture will definitely tell a thousand words and don’t think I need to say more about what they were getting up to.

I’m sure that you will agree these common blues have a beautiful pattern really something eye catching.

While I was praying to the camera gods ( down on my knees ) I noticed there was a honeybee just to the left of me. Only it was not staying in one place for long, so knew this could be like my first image a fleeting shot if I even manage to get it..

I had to change the settings because of the light kept changing. So these two although both different brightnesses were shot using 1/800s still at f9

There must be something about these magenta flowers if you know what these might be leave me a comment, I can’t seem to find what they are.

Next stop for me was waterside, I wanted to see if I could capture a picture of a dragonfly of some sort, and add to the days captures.

It took a little while of sitting by the water – probably about fifteen minutes or so when a small emerald damselfly (believe that’s what it’s called) started playing about over the water so maybe my luck was in.. but no such luck, it soon took off never to be seen again..

So there I sat for a while thinking this will be a bust not going to get one and then I see one ..literally two feet from me blending in behind a red twig .. a two inch long metallic emerald green dragonfly. It must have been there all along – now if I move am I going to make it fly away?

I twist moving the camera very slowly, I’m sure it sees me because it moves around the back of the twig (the little bugger is playing hide and seek) so the next shot, you will see what I mean – it’s like it’s watching me.

Now to play games with it, I want to get a better shot of it.. really isn’t easy because of its location and flowers in the way.. time to move a little round the side and get a side view.. this shot is what I managed to take by holding the camera out to one side and keeping my butt fully planted so not to make the grass or twigs move..

Zoom in and let me know what you think!

I’m pretty happy with it as it shows lots of detail and those colours are like multi coloured tinfoil. At least I managed to capture a picture of a dragon fly ..

I won’t hold you too much longer! On my walk away from taking the last few shots I managed to capture a few other beautiful butterfly images so will finish with a few of them.. there was so many on the other side of the tree (pictured previously )

What do you think of these.. these are a few I’m definitely proud of.. again beautiful detail and who knew that there would be so many types in one place.

And lastly

My conclusion even though having a macro lens and a full frame camera and so on will always take things to the next level.

I feel sometimes you don’t always need these things to still get creative and get up close and personal with a subject..

Even with some of the cameras from two or three years ago you can still get some cracking shots, let me know what you think,do you agree?

Do you like what I captured?

I’m no macro photographer and I’ve only done this sort of thing a handful of times.. but I’m sure you will agree theres something about each of these images that makes them stand out !

Until next time! Thanks for reading, now stop wasting time and go take some pictures 😉 😉 😉