My first (and long overdue) Photo-Walk : part 2: Andrew Hayden Park

As promised, here is second part of Sunday morning’s photo-walk with an old friend who happens to be a photo enthusiast as well.

For the first submission, please visit My first (and long overdue) Photo-Walk : part 1: Dick Bell Park

I decided to break into two posts because of the number of photos and I want to differentiate between the two parks.  Although they are side-by-side, they are very different in what they have to offer.

Andrew Hayden Park

This is a much larger park and we only walked around the western side of it.  There were time constraints in that we wanted a chance to grab breakfast before heading back and we figured that we could revisit another time and walk around more for different shots.

I have only two main subjects from this park.  The first is a tiny little waterfall (only about 2ft high) that I wanted to capture.

I’m drawn to moving water each and every time and try to see what the ‘silky effect’ can do for it.  At this point, the sun was shining directly on the water and I had to try and time the shots so that the sun was at least partly filtered through the clouds to avoid blowouts – even with my ND filters.

I then spotted something that got me very excited.  Among the geese and ducks, an egret was just strolling around.  I think he’s actually named a ‘great egret’.

Told my friend about my discovery and off I went to see if I can get some images of this guy.  I ended up following (chasing) him around for quite a while and he seemingly wasn’t too thrilled at having a stalker.

I even got a couple with other birds.  It’s almost like they all know him.

We could probably have a caption bubble on him “Hey gull.  This guy with a camera keeps following me around.  What should I do?”

He then flew off a short distance to another part of the park.  I kept my eye on him so that I didn’t lose him.  (stalker)

I got quite a few shots here but the problem was that I don’t really like goose poop in my images.  Trust me, there is a LOT of goose poop in this park.  So I had to pick and choose what to share from the shots before he flew off again.

All in all, I consider this outing to have been a success.  I got some time with an old friend, got to go out and make photos, and even got a good surprise by way of a bird I don’t often see.

I will be planning another photo-walk very soon.