Glynn Hobbs - imageweaver

This years long, hot summer has been great for finding plenty of insects to photograph. I am fortunate enough to have a large number of lakes on my doorstep, which have offered me a wonderful opportunity to shoot one of my favourite insects.....Damselflies!  Damselflies are found mainly near shallow, freshwater habitats and are graceful fliers with slender bodies and long, filmy, net-veined wings. Damselflies are generally smaller, more delicate, and fly weakly in comparison with dragonflies . They are predatory aerial insects and colours can be stunningly vivid. Damselflies can usually be distinguished from dragonflies by their thinner, needlelike abdomens and by the way they hold their wings when at rest. With few exceptions, damselflies hold their wings vertically and together, rather than horizontally and spread apart. Also, the four wings are almost identical in size and shape and in the vein patterns. The large eyes of damselflies differ from those of...

Little Egret The elegant Little Egret was once a rare visitor to our shores, but can now regularly be spotted around the coastline of England. Look out for it amongst all the seagulls with its beautiful pure white feathers and distictive neck plumes that herald the breeding season. The little egret is a recent colonist, and is most common along the south and east coasts of England and in Wales. The North Kent Coast, estuaries of Devon and Cornwall, Poole Harbour and Chichester Harbour hold some of the largest concentrations and they are also common in East Anglia. They are an increasingly common sight in inland areas too and are gradually increasing their range northwards. You can see little egrets all year round, although numbers increase in autumn and winter as birds arrive from the continent.  All of the above images were taken in Minnis Bay,  with my  Nikon D500/Nikon 200-500 combination. I hope that you...

Now we all know that I generally only photograph wildlife, but every so often, something else comes along whilst i'm waiting for my intended target! Over the past few weeks, I have been back in the UK shooting Wading and Foreshore birds between Minnis Bay and Reculver. When the weather blows up, the area also gets a number of other visitors including windsurfers and kitesurfers. Bearing in mind that it's November and temperatures have been in single figures, these guys must be a hardy breed. Although a reasonable distance offshore, the 500mm lens captured the action really well, with some nice sharp images. However, the one thing that all of us wildlife photographers want, is 'more reach' (a more powerful lens). I have just purchased a 1.4 teleconverter, which will turn my 500mm lens into an effective 700mm lens............so watch this space! During the morning, the wind strength grew and the number of surfers steadily increased, making q...

What a friendly little chap, who stayed for over an hour in our garden I always love it when a subject comes to me...........it makes a real change to the usual searching of the local countryside. Earlier in the year, this little fella appeared on our lawn here in the Dordogne, France and decided to hang around and strike some poses for me. In fact, it followed me around the garden for over an hour! As we are now well into Autumn and the leaves are all over the garden, it reminded me of our visitor and in particular, the need to take care when burning bonfires. Now is the time that our prickly friends will be thinking about hibernation and we can all help them out by making hedgehog friendly areas in our gardens. If you have the room, a log pile makes a great home for hedgehogs and is so easy to make - simply take any old logs and make as large a pile (the bigger the better) as you can in an undisturbed part of your garden. Piles of leaves are always a favo...

Up close and personal with a pair of Fritillary Butterflies I love all nature photography, but one of my favourite genres is Macro. The ability to photograph the smallest of species in superb detail, shows us their tiny world in a way that we would otherwise miss. Macro allows us to understand the lives of these fascinating and often misunderstood creatures. A normal lens will not focus close enough to obtain the focus or detail required in macro photography, so we must use either a dedicated macro lens, or add specialist adapters to achieve the results that you see on this page. As I often need to get to within just a few inches of the subject, the shadow from the lens itself can frequently shut out the light required to illuminate the subject. In these circumstances, I utilise a 'Marumi Macro Ringflash' which mounts on to the front of the actual lens and lights the subject directly. A Crab Spider catches a Hoverfly The colours of the insect world vary enor...