Macro Fuchsias and a mystery

I went into the garden to try to practise the art of Macro photography on some wildlife this morning.  I drew a blank on insects, so I thought that I'd try some flowers.  The fuchsia flower has always fascinated me, so I thought I'd give them a whirl and promptly discovered why people resort to cut specimens when playing the macro card - the wind was blowing them all over the place and when I found a bloom that I liked, the background was awful, so I cut them and set them up indoors away from wind and with a dark background for plenty of contrast with the flowers.  By way of variety I chose a pale pink flower from the garden whose species is unknown to me - I don't even know whether it is a weed or a cultivated plant. Whatever, it looked suitable for my purpose.  Any identification gratefully received!  I won't be printing these in a hurry - I'd need to take out an ink mortgage for the background!

IR at Hatfield House

Out for my birthday to Hatfield House last week to meet old friends whom we haven't seen for far too long.  When I looked out in the morning there were some patches of blue in the sky as well as some high cloud, so I thought that it might be a good day for some infra-red.  Judge for yourself!

All are processed in Color Efex Pro, then Silver Efex Pro followed by noise reduction to the sky using Dfine

Pre-season Rugby at CRUFC

I usually confine my rugby shots to the CRUFC website, but that is misbehaving this morning, so I am posting a sub-set from yesterday's two games against Old Albanians here until it is repaired.  There were two games, the first of which Cambridge won (in black) and the second was won by the OAs.  Some players featured in both games and a few sadly featured in A & E.

Stef Liebenberg returns after a 5 year absence; we all hope that the hand injury which he picked up won't keep him out for long:

Steve the Swerve demonstrating where the Hip in Hipwell comes from:

Luckily we have more than one capable Scrum Half: