A new year at Bissoe

So the Christmas holidays have come and gone and I'm now back in Cornwall for my penultimate term at University College Falmouth. I had a few successful shoots back home in Wiltshire but was looking forward to getting back to Bissoe Valley Nature Reserve to continue my ongoing assignment.

True to form, the weather wouldn't clear up.  Dark, dull, grey clouds.  So without a ray of sunshine for a week, my photography was limited to a few mediocre shots.  But this week I have been much more successful.  Initially, I had a few failures, which I expected.  I've also been experimenting with capturing birds in flight using flash and am slowly improving. But it is my other shoots which have proved best.

I went to Bissoe at night to try and capture the stars, but it got very foggy. Although I wasn't getting the shots I wanted I kept shooting long exposures and got some really interesting results.  I have shot this 'stack' before but in different conditions.  The fog gave quite a ghostly effect.  It is lit by surrounding buildings.

This is another location I have shot numerous times in different conditions and shooting it in fog, with a 4 minute exposure, created quite a surreal image.  The 'stack' on the left was lit by a building site to the right.

This fungi, a Wrinkled Club, Clavulina rugosa, was a surprise to me.  I thought it was a lichen species originally, and struggled to get a decent shot of it.  I used a Canon 70-200mm lens with extension tubes to take 12 photos of differing focus.  I then stacked all 12 shots on Photoshop giving a perfectly sharp shot.