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In keeping with the season I thought I’d share with you one of my favourite winter shrubs with its vibrantly coloured woody stems. This is Salix alba var. vitellina ‘Yelverton’, a type of willow, and every winter it provides a golden, burning glow around Seven Acres and the lake at RHS Wisley Gardens.
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Have you been feeling the blues today? I was, so I lost myself in work for a while and let the Blue Morpho and other blue butterflies at RHS Wisley Gardens, including the Blue Diadem and the Clipper Blue-subspecies, carry away my woes.
Then I left the warm and beautiful Glasshouse and returned to the pouring rain and darkness that has plagued the South of England all winter!
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Juxtaposition
I got this robin free with a cappuccino at RHS Wisley Gardens last year!
This weekend is the annual RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch. I’ll be at Wisley with Simon, my friend Nikki and her children, so after we’ve delighted in the butterflies we’ll be having a few cuppa’s and counting the birds 🙂
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Juxtaposition
Juxtaposition isn’t just about unexpected pairings, it also means the state of being close together or side by side.
These Diadem butterflies are most definitely very close together! Love is in the air at RHS Wisley Gardens, Butterflies In The Glasshouse event 🙂
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Family
Family: Papilionidae, Subfamily: Papilioninae, Genus: Papilio
In other words: Swallowtail Butterflies! The word papilio is the latin for butterfly.
I found three members of this family today at RHS Wisley Gardens on my first foray into the 2014 Butterflies In The Glasshouse event.
The Asian Swallowtail (Papilio Iowi), sometimes called Great Yellow Mormon, is found in Borneo, Indonesia, and the Philippines (Palawan, Balabao).
The King Swallowtail or Thoas Swallowtail (Papilio thoas) is found in the southernmost United States, Mexico, Central America and South America (as far south as Argentina and Uruguay). Today was the first time that I’ve managed to photograph one!
The Great Mormon (Papilio memnon) is a large swallowtail found in southern Asia. It is widely distributed and has thirteen subspecies. The female is polymorphic and with mimetic forms. In other words there are a number of different forms, that interbreed, living in the same habitat. Females can mimic other butterflies in appeareance, often to deter predators, so it’s not unusual to see a Great Mormon male mating with what looks like the Asian Swallowtail female. It’s probably a mimic! As many as twenty-six female forms are reported.
All photographs taken today 20/1/14. Sources: Wikipedia; RHS Wisley Butterfly Guide; Natural History Museum
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RHS Wisley Garden’s spectacular event, Butterflies In The Glasshouse, opens this Saturday 18th January!
My featured image today is a Scarlet Swallowtail showing off for the cameras and it won last years’ Butterfly Photography Competition. I’m utterly fascinated with butterflies and every year I spend much of the Winter in The Glasshouse feeding my obsession.
It’s also a fantastic time of year for birdwatching at Wisley so be ready for all things winged over the next two months!
I’ve created an Ultimate Spotter Guide with some of my favourite images from last years event. Wherever possible I’ve included images of the butterfly’s under and upper-sides. There are only two butterflies that I’m missing, The King Swallowtail and Big Billy.
This week I also collaborated on an article for The Guide 2 Surrey with journalist/singer/songwriter/events organiser Wizzi Seaton: Wisley Gardens, a Year in Pictures
We hope to join forces again on more photographic journeys through Surrey.
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Now that I’m not fixed into creating a new photograph to post every day, I thought it would be nice to join in with some of the other challenges hosted by fellow bloggers.
I’ve really enjoyed seeing everyone’s posts for Ailsa’s Travel Theme. I hope I can entertain you all with some submissions of my own! This week’s photo was taken in Manchester over the Christmas period. We were only there for the day visiting my friend, Rachel, and her family but we had a bit of time to see the city illuminated after dusk.
Primark is a retailer of extremely affordable items (that’s my generous description!). I rather like the irony of such a shop being set in this grand and elegantly lit building. Originally built in 1877 for Lewis’ department store, this is Victorian architecture at its best! Whatever I may think of their produce, I must say that the owners of Primark have done us a great service in restoring such a wonderful piece of Manchester’s historic City Centre.
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Window
Photographs are windows into the photographers world. Often they are windows into precious moments from our past.
My featured image is a photograph from 1995 of my friend Rachel posed by a broken window in an abandoned factory near the village of Gomshall. My second image is from the same photoshoot. Both photos were taken on film and developed by myself in a dark room. I miss doing that!
My third photograph is of Charlotte, taken at Stokesay Castle in 2008, not long after I’d started dating her father, Simon. I love our visits to Shropshire! I love them too of course 🙂
My last photograph for this weeks challenge is from 2013. This is my goddaughter, Rosie, and her brother, James, at Mansion House in Leatherhead, eagerly awaiting the marriage of their grandmother, Chris, to Trev. I don’t photograph many weddings but this was family, special. Both the children also had their naming ceremonies at Mansion House!
These portraits by window-light are visual links to some of the most precious people in my life. The invisible strings that run though their lives are tied to many loved ones. I can see them all when I look at these photos. They’re just through the memory window of my mind and tied to my heart.
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Beginning
Our fabulous holiday in Kos last year began with a flight across Europe. So often when I’ve flown it’s been at night but this time we flew in the afternoon, arriving in Kos just after sunset.
As we crossed the Central Eastern Alps, then flew south along the ridges of the Balkan Mountains we were treated to the most magnificent views!
The landscape below became an otherworldly vista, reminiscent of the finest artworks by fantasy and science fiction visionaries.
I wished for dragons to come soaring up through the cloud banks, carried on warm thermals, delighting in the freedom of flight, bellowing their joy and lighting up the skies in bright conflagration.
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