I woke up to a day without wind and only a tiny bit of rain so I headed out to Staglands with a fellow photog for a play with our cameras. Usually when I get to Staglands I ignore the farm birds – ducks, geese, turkeys etc. Today they were our main focus. The recent rain bought all the colours out just that little bit brighter and because it was a Friday there were very few people at the park. From the point of view of the chickens, ducks and geese that meant not many humans offering them food. So we had plenty of subjects to photograph coming towards us with that look of hope. In the image below, I loved the way the turkey was puffing himself up to attract a mate with his feathers looking like metal amour.
I decided to limit myself to my lumix 35-100 2.8 lens and left my other two lenses at home. For the most part I shot at f2.8 but there were a few times when I pushed it a bit to increase the depth of field.Being so used to using a bigger lens made it a bit of a challenge to get my distances right however I am always up for a challenge. It is amazing what you can learn about your photography when you take away some of your options. You think more about how to achieve the image you have in your minds eye. These chickens were very obliging, even jumped up onto a fence to make it easier for us to get a clear shot at them.
There were also lots of peacocks but the one I liked the most was a single female chick with just a hint of the colour she would display as she got older. It doesn’t matter how many times I visit Staglands Wildlife Reserve, I always come away with images I am proud of.
These are just a few of the images from today’s shoot. I will continue to process them over the next few days and post a few more early next week. Watch this space!