When I first started trying to do macro photography with my G3, I saw some photographs in Amateur Photographer by a woman whose name, I think (my memory isn’t working properly today), was Kit Young. I can dig out the copy of AP at some time but for now she’s Kit Young.

Her work was all macro plant photography, done in natural light, indoors. She shoots film, not digital, or at least she did when I saw the article. She inspired me so much that I went and bought macro lenses for my G3, then a 100mm macro lens for my 10d. Strangely though, almost all of my plant macro work has not been done indoors.

I have tended to shoot ‘on location’ but on a blowy day like today, that plays havoc with focus and DoF control. I’d been looking around at some possible shots but knew the shot I wanted would be out of reach in weather like this.

Notwithstanding my photographic obstacles, I’ve done a lot of gardening today, including taking the flowers off my chives (it always seems like a crime to do this to me but it’s good gardening practice because you get the benefit of the chives over a much longer season if you bite the bullet and do it). I can never bear to just dead-head them so I take them from the base of the stem and have them indoors as cut flowers instead.

By the end of the day, I’d got myself no pic but a vase of lovely flowers and some nice, diffused natural light because the cloud cover has increased here quite a bit this evening. I was looking at the vase of chives, remembering the article about Kit Young because one of the shots the AP featured of hers was a macro chive shot and ‘bingo’ as they say. I decided to have a go at the indoor natural light shot for myself and I ended up spoiled for choice – I really like about half a dozen of the twenty-two shots I took.

So, on a day when inspiration was hard to come-by, I worked backwards to the start of my ‘photographic journey’ and this is the result.

Last year, I was thrilled to be named 'Boss of the Year' - one of the greatest honours I've ever received!