Today I woke up on time! Out the house at about half past 5, and reached Bushy Park just before 7am. The skies were still clouded over, and only just beginning to get light. Glee!!!! Sad to say, the skies were clouded over the whole day :( There was only a very, very small window where the sun peaked through the clouds and I only had a few crappy shots then.
Today was rather quiet, in terms of photographers? I think I was the only one toting heavy gear around. I only noticed 3 other photogs that seemed to be only using their 18-55 kinda range of kit lenses (oh yes, the power of a 12 megapixel camera with a 300mm lens ;-) )
I started out the day with the 300/4 AF-S. The south west region of bushy park has some suitably natural backgrounds.
I also managed to catch these two deer playing around.
Definitely playing around, as scant minutes later, they were in this pose and I had to take a shot, crappy background or not.
Next, I followed this big guy who was keeping his herem in line, and chasing off any rivals. Not much challenge for him, as the other deer he chased off were much smaller. (image above significantly cropped)
Managed to catch him in my favourite portrait type shot. Had to follow them all over the place....
Was feeling a bit hungry, and went to find the Busy Park welcome center, and on the way I met this magnificent stag. (Btw, the leek and potato soup was pretty good.) The background behind him is not very optimal (observe the square crop :P ). This was me pointing the lens down as best I can to avoid the background. And I'm as high as can be, on one of the many mounds of dirt that litter the landscape. Gah.
So what did I do? I walked in a zig zagged pattern towards him, and when I got close enough, leopard crawled towards him. He gave a call when I was in an un-optimum position. Drat that fence!!!! ARGH!
After a few more minutes of crawling around, avoiding deer pellets, I moved into the best position for the only suitable background - a dark copse of trees. Was very lucky to catch this shot of him calling, as I was kinda bored taking the same portrait shot over and over and over, that I was dragging my shutter to catch the motion of the plants. And he called when I was doing that. Burst, burst burst. That's the way to go.
As last week, I came across a resting stag. This big fellow however was with many other deer, and took me a fair bit of time, again, crawling over to get the shot.
A whole herd of fallow deer (I think). Perhaps this is the reason why there are deer culls in Bushy park, that's ALOT of deer, and probably only a small portion of the park's population.
Now the whole of my morning was spent with the red deer, after seeing the fallow deer I had to have some shots :) Like for example, of this magnificent white stag.
Check out the crop :)
The fallow deer seem to be much more skittish than the red deer; today I've had a red deer actually come up to me when I was packing up my gear.... the fallow deer on the other hand were very nervous.
Took me a good ten minutes to slowly make my way to get close to the big one. I'm pretty sure I looked like an idiot leopard crawling to the deer.... but hey, if it keeps them calm I'm all for it. When I was done for the day, I got on my knees pretty close to the fallow deer, big mistake, the whole herd was kinda spooked and started to move off; I quickly bid a quick retreat.
Erm, random picture I shot at Teddington train station :)
No comments:
Post a Comment