River Loop Trail

These images were taken on the River Loop Trail near Fort Edmonton Park. The intent of this walk was to find a nice spot to get some photos of the new moon just above the horizon. Not sure whether I messed up direction or time, but I never did see the moon that night :)

To begin with, I did my best to get a few images of birds that were flittering around the trees along the path (sparrows?) I think that these turned out better than any of my previous attempts at bird photography, so I will call it a successful night (regardless of the moon mishap).

I noticed a duck on the path shortly after starting from the trailhead. I wanted to put on my telephoto lens right away and get a close up shot, but experience has taught me to always take a few shots with whatever lens is on the camera before trying to switch (in this case a 50 mm) – and I am glad I did! The square image below is one of those shots with the 50 mm. While switching I started to hear the sounds of a big group of people coming from the other direction. I just got the longer lens on as they came around the corner. I got the camera up, on, and fired off 8 shots of the duck coming right at me and flying (what felt like) just over me head. The images are blurry and overexposed. But, honestly, I am pretty pleased that I managed to get anything :)

As the sun went down I played with some long exposure self-portraits. It was fun (though I might have overdone it a tad with the post processing…) The last image below is a 30 second exposure with my Pentax f/1.4 50mm lens.