Another Year!

Andy’s life-long interest in natural history eventually developed into a serious photographic passion.  Yet somehow he also finds time to run his own camera shop in Chiswick.  And he is a member of the XRR Photographic Society in Watford.

Andy uses an Olympus mirrorless camera.  This has a “four/thirds” sensor with a 2x crop factor.  His 300mm macro lens is therefore equivalent to a 600mm lens on a full-frame camera.  And the camera has some other helpful features including silent shooting, extremely fast burst rates, focus bracketing, and in-camera focus stacking.

His subjects in this presentation ranged from large to small to very small to minute.  So, from deer, through hares and snakes and a large variety of birds, through assorted fungi, through butterflies and other insects, and then to the amazingly tiny (less than one millimetre) and photogenic slime moulds.

He began with fungi.  These have the great advantage that they don’t move.  So you can concentrate on getting a good image.

Some fungi are quite large, but they can be very small.  Andy showed us some great images, including – porcelain fungus, fly agaric, magpie inkcap (which can be 7-8 inches tall), dripping bonnet (which is apparently bioluminescent), bog beacon, holly parachute, some cup fungi, and the very small dung cannon (which can be found on cowpats).

Andy also showed us images of several slime moulds.

These are neither fungi, nor animals, nor plants.  They are microscopic organisms that feed on bacteria and can aggregate together to form larger bodies and even move en masse.  They seem to have almost unpronounceable Latin names, but they make fascinating subjects.

Being so small they are very difficult to find and photograph.  Andy crawls around among rotting wood and leaves with a torch and a magnifying glass to find them.  And he needs to use a specialist photographic set up to get the very high magnification required to get decent images.  Back in May, Andy’s photographs of slime moulds were featured in a seven-page spread in National Geographic Magazine.

We also saw – somewhat larger – adders, hares, fallow deer, and grey seals.

There was also plenty of insects – including honeybee, nomad bee, shield bug, beetle, weevil, spider, hopper, fly, (including yellow dung fly and bee fly), cranefly, damselfly, and mayfly.  And an array of butterflies, many of them covered in dew in the early morning – including wood white, marsh fritillary (and caterpillar), common blue, brown argus, small copper, small heath, and small skipper.  And a selection of birds, many photographed in Upper Teesdale, County Durham – including snipe, jack snipe, lapwing, red grouse, curlew, common sandpiper, meadow pipet, woodcock, gannet, barn owl, and sedge warbler.

There were so many superb images to enjoy.  But the otherworldly slime moulds were probably the stars of this great show.

Andy is so clearly passionate about the natural world.  He has a massive knowledge of his subject and an extensive portfolio of beautiful images.  He is also an accomplished and engaging speaker.  So this was a marvellous presentation which was greatly enjoyed by us all.

Andy’s images of British wildlife can seen on Natural Picture Library
https://www.naturepl.com/search?s=andy+sands&filters=sf6%3D