Inverewe Garden is a botanical garden in the Scottish Highlands, just to the north of Poolewe in Wester Ross. It was started in 1862 by Osgood Mackenzie on the estate surrounding Inverewe House. This was taken in the walled garden, one of the first large areas in the garden that you come to.When I took this I had to wait for people to move out of the way. The gardens are very famous for their more than 2500 species of exotic plants and there were many people walking around and asking the gardeners questions. I wanted this photo to be a colourful garden vista with just the one sole man gardening away.

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I have been inspired by close up or macro photography over the past few weeks of browsing Flickr and seeing what people can do with still life setups and depth of field. The above photograph was a quick test for my new piece of glass. Kov took me to a second hand camera shop in Manchester’s Northern Quarter on Monday to have his new Sigma macro lens looked at. We were in there for over an hour and I ended up coming away with an old Vivitar Macro Adapter to put in front of my Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens. As far as my tests have indicated I can now focus ten times closer with this small adapter.

Whilst sat at my desk I was firing off a couple test exposures of the keyboard on my Apple MacBook Pro. I realised that I could compose the letters E and D on the keyboard to make an interesting composition. The above image was two photographs combined in Photoshop to make both the letters relatively sharp, but the rest of the keys blurred. That is the f/1.8 depth of field at work. Expect to see more interesting and creative close up work in the coming weeks.

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This is the second photograph of a heron that I have published taken on the Water of Leith in Edinburgh, Scotland. I prefer the one above, but others tell me they prefer the one of the heron wading. It makes me proud that this was taken on a 135mm zoom lens, when a lot of the full time professional wildlife photographers are shooting with 400 - 600mm prime lenses! Apart from being very fortunate with my timing on this shot, I think my favourite part about this image is the reflection of the bird on the water below. The reflection of the bright sunlight on the green leaves in the background is the only disappointing area of this photograph for me. Still, this is only a minor detail and the overall photo is currently one of my favourite nature history / wildlife photograph taken this year, especially when you consider this is a wild bird and not taken in a zoo or animal park.

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Looking at how the angle the sunlight was falling on the “black bean”, I wondered if the lens would be able to cope without getting lots of lens flare in my shot. Looking down at my little screen I knew straight away it would be a picture worth publishing in my eyes. The composition of the sculpture and it’s shadow works really well. For a lot of photograph such as landscapes a sky like this one is perfect, but in the photo I personally think this is a little distracting from the main focal point which is the artwork in the foreground. In the backgrond you can see Tower Bridge taking traffic over the River Thames and towards the Tower of London on the other side. Just off the frame to the right of this photo is London’s City Hall and Major’s Office.

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I don’t like publishing photographs of myself, but as I see it, it’s a better photo of my camera than of my face! I am very pleased to announce the launch of my second website. Show It Ed follows the same basic idea of this website, a new photo every day, comment below and three on the main page. Only Show It Ed is not my photographs but a new photographer everyday allowing me to showcase one of their images.

The comments below are my thoughts, feelings, opinions, critique and honest feedback of what I think about the photograph. If you would like to have one of your photos critiqued and exposed to the masses, I invite you to read the new sites frequently asked questions. I will be linking to peoples online portfolios / websites / Flickr galleries etc as a thanks for allowing me to use their work. So please, visit www.showited.com - thank you.

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Last night a tram going between St. Peter’s Square and Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester came off the tracks. It happened at around 11pm and the above photo was taken at around 11am today. There are six more photographs of the scene after the jump. According to the police I spoke to on the scene they are currently investigating what happened and hope to have to line operational by tomorrow morning. Reading an article on Manchester Online I can report that three male passengers received minor injuries to their back and necks and were treated at Manchester Royal Infirmary. Metrolink said that the service between Old Trafford and Piccadilly had been running later than usual to cater for the 53,000-crowd attending the concert. I can only presume that the tram (which was a double tram) had been far too over crowded and was moving too fast for the bend.

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