Ne'er Cast A Clout 'Til May Is Out - Peter Downer Photography

Well this is one of those years where the weather conspires against you. Working full time means I can usually only get out to take photos at the weekends or in the evenings (unless I am on holiday). So far this year most weekends have been disappointing an uninspiring. This is the basic wisdom behind the old adage used as the title to this blog.

This weekend saw some lovely spring weather finally coincide with a weekend and I was again able to get out. I thought I would take a short trip up to Portsdown Hill to explore a meadow that is absolutely full of wild flowers throughout the summer.

It was a little early in the season, and the orchids are only just popping up, but was a glorious day and a pleasure to be out.

In previous years I have experimented with various ways to steady the plants using homemade flexible arms with crocodile type clips on the end, whilst they worked the grip was too strong for the more delicate plants so as you can see above I finally got a ready made Wimberley Plamp 2 from WEX. It has a very soft foam insert that holds the plant but does not damage it.

Update – The yellow plant above was incorrectly labelled, now corrected thanks to a post by a fellow photographer in our Portsmouth Photowalkers group.

Although there weren’t many of the summer flowers out yet, I did find some I particularly liked the Archangel, although those very shiny reflective parts were hard to manage.

To get these low shots was tricky because of the tripod legs getting in the way of the viewfinder. I would usually use the rear screen but the sun was glaring off it so I decided to try out the Canon connect app. If your camera has wireless capabilities you can connect your phone to the camera an control it from the phone whilst seeing a live image on the phone; much more comfortable.