It happens every year but is no less beautiful for that. The woods and hedgerows shed their drabness and come alive with colour.
Many spring photos tend to concentrate on that colour alone and are shot at the height of the flowering season. I decided to make
use of that softer period, when the process first begins, by concentrating on those pioneers that first pop their heads out of
their buds. The main benefits are less leaves and more even light, enabling some really nice "portraits".

1. My favourite wood is a remnant of the Forest of Arden which contains something of everything, with surprises at every turn.



2. Looking straight up from that spot, the canopy is just beginning to break bud. (There was a squirrel up there too !)



3. And straight down, just off to the side, is one of nature's strangest creations - a slime mould, which is a mobile community of
fungus-like entities that uses its collective strengths to move on (almost literally 'flowing on') to new pastures and, eventually, as
is happening here, to condense into a hard cyst that will mature, burst and scatter its spores to start the process over.



4. Blackthorn is the first to appear. Great thickets of white without any leaves at all suddenly appear that almost demand that
you photograph their flowers against the bright sunshine.



5. On the ground, wood anemones appear in their hundreds ....



6. .... accompanied by flashy, glossy celandines that look for all the world like enameled metal.



7. And before it gets swamped by stinging nettles, the gorgeous yellow 'dead nettle' called archangel is worth a close look.
A bee's weight on that dazzling landing pad causes the lid to clamp shut over its hairy bum, depositing a great load of pollen.



8. At the same time a 'giant' chickweed called stitchwort is making use of unoccupied patches alongside the path. It needs
to grow, flower and seed quickly before brambles and nettles overtake it.



9. But we can't ignore the bluebells! All their lovely detail is lost when photographed en masse. When there is no
competition from huge carpets of them you are naturally encouraged to examine the forms of individual flowers.



10.


11.



12. I was very surprised to find this white forgetmenot. It's a 'first' as far as I am concerned.



13. And a lovely little collection from the side of the path to finish it off.

Great idea and super execution of it.

How much is the premium for flying Buzzair?

That's how I began doing it before I realised you could move either the subject or the camera. The main problem is estimating the increments to keep them more or less equal. A twist of the focus ring produces a lot more result than an equal twist on the screw of a rig (which usually has a handy scale to assist). And no matter how carefully you fixed the camera, because you are exerting a sideways force on it by gripping the focus ring, you risk shifting the whole lot laterally when you are 3/4 of the way through..... damn!

Ah. I just read the blurb - it doesn't play with m42s - and that was what I had in mind.

That one's certainly value for Monet !

What is the image quality like and how many stops does one lose? I'm thinking of long lenses made longer that you'd otherwise be unable to focus by hand.

I have learned always to leave a large, otherwise unnecessary border around shots destined for stacking since that is the area that will suffer as the images are successively aligned. Remember that as you shoot closer and closer to the subject, (or further away, depending on how you do it), the perspective shifts. Shifting it back to match the earlier/ later shots can do a lot of violence to the extreme edges. Keeping the big border area consigns most of that violence outside the area of interest.

I simply can't understand the sheer complexity of these fancy toolkits - (I've got some of them) - and I go back to Faststone Image Viewer every time. Half of them, you can't understand the opening screen, never mind how to 'make it go'. I even bought the Affinity Workbook but to no avail. It must be my mental processing because I can't use MS Word either - too complicated, yet I'm a real wiz with MS Publisher!

I'd certainly let those take over. lovely looking little flower that you have shown off most flatteringly.