So I have been so busy the last month with my Stag do and work that I have not been able to write a blog post in what seems like forever. I had thought about taking a camera to Barcelona, but decided against it, as it was not going to be the sort of trip that I would be taking pictures on. However it was bank Holiday Monday today, and Chelsea was away (on her Hen) so after working the saturday and sunday, I was itching to get out and take some images. Sadly the weather let me down (as usual) and has been very grey and overcast. I decided to give it a go anyway, and so went for a short walk along the river opposite our flat. 

I came across a family of Egyptian Geese, so decided that i would stick with the family and try to document their lives instead of continuing along the bank.

My first obstacle in getting a snapshot of their family life was the dad, who was at first clearly not pleased at this intrusion into their lives. He stood away from the ducklings, positioning himself in between us. I could see he was clearly used to having to protect his ducklings. I was soon to find out how often....

This brings me onto my second obstacle, and of course as always this was people...

I understand that people (mainly of Asian descent) like to get a picture or 2 but to practically run up to them and stick an iphone in their faces is very frustrating. I stood back and watched my shoot evaporate before my eyes as they were forced back into the water. 

After a little while though (and once this group of tourists fucked off) he started to relax and brought the ducklings back onto the shore. This was my chance to get some more intimate shots of the ducklings as they began to feed.

Again this was short lived as this time, a dog chased them back into the water. I relocated further down the river after this, and hoped they would travel down the river too and come out again near to me where it was quieter. Lucky for me this was the case and i got a few more shots of the family as they came back up again to feed.

Again this was short lived as more people were coming down and I could see the geese would be off again, so this short shoot came to an end as quickly as it had began.

I shot all the images with the 400mm lens on the 5d MK 3. I was shooting at around F/7 and trying to keep my shutter speed to around 1000th of a second. I made this decision as I knew I was going to be quite close to the subject and wanted to take advantage of the 5d's superior autofocus over the 7D and its cropped sensor. This gave up length but I feel it was the correct decision in this instance.

It was great to focus on a specific subject and find different compositions to tell a story. I would have loved to have taken more time on this, but you are always restricted in some way, and sadly as it's always the case in a place like Kingston and Bushy park, it is people that cause an issue.

FIN