A short walk in Ottawa’s Greenbelt
My purpose for being out the trail today was to try out Graeme’s Nikon D70s which he had internally modified a few years ago to use as a dedicated IR camera. I was also carrying along my normal D300 equipped with my much older 55mm Macro lens. This post just includes some of the images that I took with the regular camera. For a look at the IR images from the modified D90, see here: IR Photography.
It was a pretty hot and a pretty dry summer in Ottawa this year and as a result the wild flowers are not as prolific as they would normally be at this time of the year. There were enough individual blossoms here and there along the trail to keep me occupied. Unfortunately, I also bumped into my nemesis, Poison Ivy, on a part of the trail where I didn’t expect it. Time will tell whether I got lucky and missed it. My fingers are crossed.
I was hoping that I might see a few late season butterflies or garter snakes. I didn’t encounter any snakes but I did see a few of the smaller species of butterflies but they wouldn’t let me in close enough for decent shots so I had to be satisfied with photographing things that didn’t move :-). That included some lichens on a rock and a gnarly stump.
After photographing a few of the flowers in the tall grass and meadows beside the trail, I decided to walk along the the side of the field of corn and see what I might find in that direction.
A large turkey surprised me as it flew by at full speed and headed into the trees. I got down to my knees a couple of times to try to photograph small tailed blue butterfly but with no success.
I really didn’t expect to see anything too exciting as I was getting close to where my car was park but, all of a sudden, a large green Leopard frog jumped out of the grass in front of me. I think that he thought that I couldn’t see him because he was kind enough to hang around long enough for me to get back down onto my knees again. Certainly a nice surprise and a nice way to end my day out in the fresh air.
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