Mum-mum gave me three Paper White bulbs as a birthday present. I planted them a few weeks ago and they are already blooming!

I couldn’t resist pulling out the extension tubes and taking some close-up pictures of the first flowers.

Someone was asking me the other day about why you should pay attention to the f-stop number in photography. Often when I am photographing birds, especially in low light, I set the camera to aperture priority and shoot wide open (f/5.6 on my 400mm lens). But for this picture, setting the aperture has a major effect on the background bokeh (blurriness). The image above was exposed at f/2.8. The one immediately below is at f/8.0, and the one further down is at f/18.0. Note how the background comes more into focus as the f-stop gets higher (and the lens aperture is smaller).