Catkins

I read an article today about choosing photographic gear, which pointed out that good equipment doesn't necessarily make a good photographer. This is true of course - but it certainly doesn't hurt. 

I'm absolutely loving my new lens: I took it out for a spin today when R and I went to Stratford to run some errands, and down at the river (where we bumped into the lovely Technophobe, also enjoying some very nice light) I got so many good shots with it that culling them down to a reasonable daily total has taken a good chunk of the evening. I've put some of them on Flickr, if you'd care to have a look; the full swan grooming sequence will probably turn up on Facebook later.

Back at home I went looking for a macro shot, this being Tiny Tuesday, and spotted some hazel catkins. We have something of a hazel problem here: the beastly stuff seeds itself freely, and once it takes nothing short of high explosive will shift it - but fortunately the squirrels eat most of the nuts before they can root, and I do rather like the catkins. It was much too windy for outdoor macro today, but I took a punt on four hand-held shots and to my astonishment they stacked very nicely in Photoshop: this is the result.

Many thanks to osuzanna for hosting Tiny Tuesday again this week. The other entries can be found here.