Out and about in fields with my smartphone

I haven’t written a post since April this year. This is not because I’ve lost interest in wildflowers but because, as happens every year, I’ve been too busy spotting them to write about them! Generally I tend to be out and about in spring and summer, then I’m at home looking things up and writing about them in autumn and winter. This is why the date of my blog posts doesn’t always match the content!

Wildflower highlights of 2021 so far

With all that summer rain, the growth has been really lush this year! Highlights for me have been:

• An abundance of orchids – both in the new varieties I’ve learnt but also the sheer numbers I’ve seen on some sites. The main image for this page is Burnt orchid.
• Spending a fab few days at Rye Harbour Nature Reserve in May.
• Getting involved with chalk grassland surveys on the Downs.
• Counting Moon carrot on Seaford Head.
• Visiting Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Derbyshire on a campervan holiday in June and photographing some wildflowers there.
• I improved my plant ID skills by getting involved in a local monthly wildflower project, and trying out Google Lens.

I’m going to write more about all these over the next few months!

Smartphone camera tip

I’m still pretty much exclusively using my budget smartphone to take pictures – it’s currently a Motorola Moto G8 Power. To start with I thought it was fairly rubbish for macro photography. It has a Macro setting which I find almost useless as it is such low resolution. But I found out a trick by trial and error! If you set the camera to auto then zoom to 2 or 3X and focus on something close by, it will tell you to try Macro instead. But if you ignore that, it will submit and give you some lovely closeup pics! I don’t know if that’s common to all smartphone cameras but it’s the first time I’ve come across it.

I still have my Nikon D3300 DSLR but hardly ever take it with me on walks as I find it quite heavy and ungainly in comparison.

 

Read more about Moon carrot  |  Orchids  |  Campion   |   Rye Harbour nature reserve