The picture of a Scorpion Fly has won the Hidden Britain category of the British Wildlife Photography Award (BWPA). Two other pictures, one showing the image of three skipper butterflies while the other showing a Four-spotted Orbweaver earned the “highly recommended” rating.

The overall BWPA winner is a picture of a jellyfish billed as “a truly beautiful shot” that “perfectly captures its iridescent colours and magical qualities.”

Macro photographs also dominated the British Seasons category and are strongly represented in other categories.

It’s subjective, really. While there is a strong line separating bad macro pictures and good ones, determining the best among the better ones is not as straight forward as picking bad apples from the good ones.

Dragonfly

Caterpillar

It always boils down to whether a particular picture gives you the “wow” feeling the first time you see it. If it brightens your soul, it’s good; if it doesn’t, then it’s not.

By the way, here are some macro photographs which emerged top in a recent contest organised by MacWorld. What makes them winners and top finishers? Can you shoot the same picture given the same opportunity and tools?

Photography is therapy. Here is a story of a man, Arno Knapen, who had trouble remembering common things like the name of paper clips following a surgery to remove a brain tumour, leaving him confused and frustrated.

He began to visit a park where he spent his time doing macro photography, taking pictures of flowers and insects, and before long he was on his way to recovery.

His is one of the many amazing stories of how photography benefits a person. I personally feel great enjoyment in macro photography. Irrespective of how the pictures turn out — good of bad — I enjoy the process of focusing the lens close to the subject, composing and then snapping.

It’s the same kind of enjoyment I felt when I took these pictures:

Dragonfly Macro

Ants hauling a catch

Lensbaby macro ... wild orchid

Bokeh

Muted green

Foliage macro

Fern country

From Wikipedia: A chrysalis (Latin chrysallis, from Greek χρυσαλλίς = chrysallís, pl: chrysalides) or nympha is the pupal stage of butterflies. The term is derived from the metallic gold-colouration found in the pupae of many butterflies referred to by the Greek term χρυσός (chrysós) for gold.

When the caterpillar is fully grown, it makes a button of silk which it uses to fasten its body to a leaf or a twig. Then the caterpillar’s skin comes off for the final time. Under this old skin is a hard skin called a chrysalis.

Today is Earth Day, the day in which we ought to pause and ponder for a moment, even for a brief moment, about Mother Earth. In Borneo, where I came from, tropical forests millions of years old is shrinking by the day.

Let’s just hope there will enough political will to protect the remaining ones.

Obviously, with apology to U2, my favourite band of all time. I mean no harm either to Artificial Horizon or No Line on the Horizon

In the Chinese culture, this is a symbol of prosperity; and prosperity and good health have always been the theme in Chinese New Year greetings.

Here’s wishing you a very Happy Lunar New Year, may the Year of the Tiger brings prosperity, good health and happiness, and in my case, a couple of new lenses…

Picture taken with Pentax K-7. No PP, just some resizing and minor sharpening.

Looks like I’m in dire need of a macro lens, something along the lines of the smc PENTAX D FA 100mm F2.8 Macro as I can’t get no satisfaction shooting up close using my one and only lens so far, the smc PENTAX DA 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 ED AL(IF).

These photos of barb wires were taken with Canon PowerShot SX1 IS. Post processing is limited to cropping, resizing the photos to fit this blog’s width and applying a minor sharpening. Other than that, WYSIWYG.

I thought no one was interested in taking barb wire photos other than me but a quick check online showed there were already stock photos dedicated to barb wires. Ouch! There goes my niche stock!