Shirley’s Bay, Dick Bell Park, Andrew Hadyn Park, Mud Lake, Old Quarry Trail
March 25, 2002 – The weather wasn’t as nice and warm as it had been in recent weeks but I decided that I needed some fresh air and exercise so convinced Graeme to come along and off we went on a circuit of some of the local area parks.
After visiting the Maplelawn gardens, I headed over to Mud Lake on my way home and was pleasantly surprised to see that there were plenty of dragonflies – an understatement.
After all of the rain and overcast skies that we have had recently, the sky in Ottawa was cloudless for a good portion of today. I decided that all that sunshine shouldn’t be allowed to go to waste so I grabbed my camera and out I went for a whirlwind tour. For today’s outing I decided to use my Nikkor 28-105 f3.5 zoom lens and carried my Nikkor 16mm f2.8 fish-eye in my pocket.
First I stopped to photograph some scilla and puskinia in my own garden.
Then I headed over to Ottawa’s experimental farm where I found some yellow daffodils and some two-toned daffodils. I used the macro feature of the 28-105mm lens and then switched to the 16mm using the fish-eye’s field curvature to get a different look. A bumblebee just happened to come along while I was lying on the ground in the middle of a batch of daffodils.
Mud Lake Outing – Ottawa Flickr Group
Note: I was using a Nikon 10.5 mm lens quite often this day and the curvature in some of the shots was quite intentional.
What started out as a potentially very damp day, turned out to be just fine as the rain stopped shortly after we arrived at the Mud Lake parking lot. Every so often a breeze would whisk through the overhead branches and wet leaves would drop their burden on the photographers below.
Mud Lake, Nepean, Ontario
Some Spring days, Mud Lake is a great spot to find migrating warblers. Other days the pickings can be slim. This day was a bit on the slow side but a few warblers did kindly oblige my interest in photography and come and perch near to where I could get a clear shot.
