Julian Cartwright - Photography

Julian Cartwright - Photography South Shropshire-based, internationally published wildlife and landscape photographer. If found, please return to Clee Hill. Prints and cards available.

More garden wanderings with the macro lens... We planted a Verbascum last year and it's flowered profusely this year. It...
02/06/2026

More garden wanderings with the macro lens... We planted a Verbascum last year and it's flowered profusely this year. It's now supporting a healthy population of these groovy little guys; Mullein Moth caterpillars. They may well totally strip the plant of its foliage but it should recover. Hopefully!

You might have noticed I've been a bit quiet on the photography front for a wee bit. The recent heatwave has been more c...
02/06/2026

You might have noticed I've been a bit quiet on the photography front for a wee bit. The recent heatwave has been more conducive to sitting with my head in the fridge rather than wandering over the hill with my camera. That's not to say I haven't been busy with photography projects. As well as putting the 2027 calendar together, I've been busy printing some pictures, both in greeting card form and as high quality prints. Printing is something I'm a big fan of - there's nothing quite like seeing your pictures on paper rather than on a monitor or tiddly little phone screen.

The results of my endeavours are a range of mounted A5 and A4 prints. And, if I do say so myself, they look absolutely stunning (so much so, I'm not sure if I want to part with them!!!)

These are high quality giclée prints, produced using Lucia Pro pigment inks on Baryta fine art paper, for very accurate colour reproduction, outstanding image clarity and incredibly long life (80+ years!!). Mounted on high quality acid-free 'archival grade' mounting board (mount sizes 10" x 8" and 14" x 11" for fitting in standard frames).

A small range of prints and my ever popular greeting cards are currently available at the wonderful Brewe Clee Hill café. Why not pop in for a bite to eat and some of the best coffee in Shropshire before having a browse?

Alternatively, stay tuned for more exciting news coming soon!

A bit warm to be wandering over the common today, it being completely devoid of shade and all that. So, I waved the big ...
26/05/2026

A bit warm to be wandering over the common today, it being completely devoid of shade and all that. So, I waved the big lens out the back door to see what would stir in the garden. Tons of bees, which is nice - particularly the Red Mason Bees plugging up the holes in the bee hotel with mud. The Hummingbird Hawk Moth is back for another year and we seem to be getting good numbers of Painted Lady butterflies. Like this one. On a thistle.

As the end of 'No Mow May' draws nearer, thoughts turn to Jungle June, Thigh-high July and Oh-my-God it's August... "We'...
22/05/2026

As the end of 'No Mow May' draws nearer, thoughts turn to Jungle June, Thigh-high July and Oh-my-God it's August... "We're gonna need a bigger mower", as Chief Brody might have said, had Jaws been about garden care rather than an angry shark. Still, the lawn's looking lovely at the moment - more flowers than grass and buzzing with pollinating insects, which is as it should be. Here's an abstact which looks rather nice and might make it onto a greeting card soon. The red is courtesy of a mass of Crimson Clover from seeds strewn last Autumn. The blue is a carpet of Germander Speedwell that chose to be there, punctuated with a few Buttercups. This picture is a multiple exposure - the digital equivalent of forgetting to wind your film on between shots.

There have been some fantastic cloud formations today and I enjoyed a grandstand view from Clee Hill Common on this afte...
14/05/2026

There have been some fantastic cloud formations today and I enjoyed a grandstand view from Clee Hill Common on this afternoon's perambulations. I was hoping for a rainbow or two, but nothing materialised until I was home and in the kitchen, slaving over a hot stove (if you can count prodding a wok full of veg with a wooden spoon as slaving). I'd like to apologise to my darling wife/handler for the delay in being fed - my culinary adventures were frequently punctuated by mad dashes out into the back garden with me camera. Quite like this one - a semi abstract of rainbow and sudden downpour. Tea (or 'dinner' if yow'm posh) was eminently palatable, due in part to copious amounts of garlic and soy sauce. Win win.

Today I've been mostly messing about with focus stacking. I can almost hear the collective "Eh?" from both my regular re...
06/05/2026

Today I've been mostly messing about with focus stacking. I can almost hear the collective "Eh?" from both my regular readers. Read on...

TLDR: A convoluted way to take pics of Mountain Pansies on Clee Hill, with a tedious, long-winded explanation of why they're not quite right. Probably best just look at the pics.

The Mountain Pansy, Viola lutea, is our largest native pansy and can be found on unimproved upland grasslands in the north and west of the UK. In Shropshire it is in decline, though it does continue to appear on the Clee every year (if anything, my non-scientific assessment is that it's more prolific this year, which is nice).

I've often idly thought it would be nice to get a picture of the pansies with the Titterstone Golf Ball (air traffic radar dome to the uninitiated) in the background. The problem is getting everything in focus, front to back: focus on the foreground pansies and the golf ball is a blur, and vice versa.

What is called for is extreme depth of field, and that's where focus stacking comes in: Basically I took a pile of piccies of the same scene, with the camera's focus point moving slightly between each shot (the camera can be set up to do this automatically so I don't lose the will to live). The resultant pile of piccies, each with a different sliver of the scene in focus, is then loaded onto the computer and clever software takes all the 'in focus' bits of each scene and blends them into one picture where everything is in focus. Mostly... All while I sit back with a cuppa and an Aldi knock-off Penguin choccie biccie. Seal bars they're called. Look and taste just like Penguins. Their Wagon Wheel copies are called Cart Wheels. Dunno how they get away with it.

Anyhoo, I say 'mostly' everything is in focus, 'cos if there's even a slight breeze and the flowers or grass move, weird things happen (smudged areas, double grass blades etc.) which is evident here. Still, not bad for a first attempt. There are probably ways around it with manual intervention (re: above comments about losing the will to live) so for now I'll try again when it's less windy.

I rarely do much macro work. Mostly because I keep forgetting I own a macro lens. Yesterday afternoon I remembered I own...
05/05/2026

I rarely do much macro work. Mostly because I keep forgetting I own a macro lens. Yesterday afternoon I remembered I own a macro lens, so I did some macro work. Behold the fruits* of an enjoyable half hour spent ferreting around in a flower bed.

(* technically they're flowers, not fruits)

Now there's a turn up. Just enjoying a coffee on the patio after a walk on the hill today (such is the cosmopolitan life...
01/05/2026

Now there's a turn up. Just enjoying a coffee on the patio after a walk on the hill today (such is the cosmopolitan life I lead) when I noticed the clouds looking a bit weird over Ludlow. So I took a picture. Turns out it's a cloud formation known as Asperitas - one of the rarest cloud types in the world. Educational innit?!

On Friday I woke up to one of those glorious temperature inversions, where the valley below Chateau Cartwright was bathe...
26/04/2026

On Friday I woke up to one of those glorious temperature inversions, where the valley below Chateau Cartwright was bathed in cloud. This is a spectacle generally reserved for the colder months, so it was nice to get one this late in the season. I hastily grabbed my camera, stuck a big telephoto lens to the front of it, pulled on my wellies and dashed out onto the common. The light was quite challenging so I concentrated on the longer end of the lens' zoom range, catching the mist playing across distant elements of the landscape. Quite atmospheric, don't you think?

Yesterday, Mrs. C. and I ventured off the hill (it happens occasionally) and crossed the border into Herefordshire to vi...
03/04/2026

Yesterday, Mrs. C. and I ventured off the hill (it happens occasionally) and crossed the border into Herefordshire to visit the Croft Castle estate. After a good, long walk that included forests, pasture, ponds, the iron age hillfort of Croft Ambrey and the river Lugg we returned to the car park to be confronted by an avenue of stunning ancient Chestnut trees. The forms, wizened with age, looked like creatures from some Lovecraftian horror, which is only emphasised by the conversion to black and white. Anyway, here's a few, posted in ascending order of madness!

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