Photography Week 37

I try to take one photograph every day whether it is with a full DSLR kit, a compact camera or a phone camera. Many of these shots are simply records of the day - things that might catch my eye or interest me. Providing a place to show some of these photos was the initial purpose of this blog but many do not work as stand alone images and need a context. Grouping them by calendar week will hopefully provide this context and give a sense of my photographic themes.

Starting with Photography week 37 (7th to 13th September) I have already posted photographs from Higger Tor in the Peak District and Sherwood Forest. These are some of the other images from this week:

Wildflowers

Whilst out walking I came across a snowberry bush growing wild - not that I knew its name when taking the photograph. Apparently, snowberries are not native to the UK and were introduced from North and Central America:

In addition to the photographs of heather in Sherwood Forest I took a series of shots of hawkweed flowers and seed heads using the heather colour as a background. There are many variations of hawkweed which are difficult to identify but the lack of stem hair suggests that I was photographing the leafy hawkweed (Hieracium umbellatum).

Hawkweed is part of the wider daisy family and like a few species in this family it is a composite flower  made up of numerous individual flowers - in other words what looks like a petal is actually and individual flower or floret. Each floret has five fused petals and five anthers around the style with a forked stigma:

Also taken in Sherwood was this photo of ragwort in the long grass:

Cultivated Flowers

I am not sure that I have used the right heading for the next shots but I wanted to distinguish between flowers growing wild and flowers grown for a purpose.

I came across a strip of land in a field which included sunflowers and a lavender coloured plant which I later identified as scorpion weed. I think these are planted as an aid for pollination. Scorpion weed is very good at attracting insects especially bees. In addition, it is grown as a green manure - plants that are ploughed back into the land as a fertiliser.

Landscapes

Two landscapes this week both of local fields. The first is a field with a small hawthorn tree on the horizon which is good for making compositions particularly when the field has been ploughed in lines or, as in this case, straw has been left in lines. I have seen this particular tree and field feature a number of times on photographic websites over the years.

The second is more of a record of the weather conditions as the image lacks foreground interest. That said I like taking and looking at big sky pictures.