I wanted to start the year by stepping outside of what I’m used to. I came up with the idea of spending 3 mornings going to the park and taking pictures of the ducks and the geese that are here for the winter. To challenge myself a little more I decided that each morning I would change the way I did things and see how that affected what I came away with.

On the first day, I was just walking around with my camera set on high-speed burst mode shooting. The ducks and geese quickly swam away if I got close at all, but I was able to get an image I like quite a bit of a goose while it was taking a drink and there was a rippled reflection of it in the water. I also tried my hand at capturing the birds as they flew by, and I had, shall we say, varying degrees of success.

On day two I set the crop mode on my camera to “square” to make myself think more about composition while I was shooting. The sunrise was beautiful that morning, and catching its reflection in the water helped me come back with more images that I liked. I spent more time standing or sitting in place, being patient, and waiting for the ducks and geese to come into my frame.

For the final day of the exercise, I decided I wanted to get closer to the ducks and the geese. Since they didn’t want me closer to them I knew I would have to do something to entice them to come to me, so I lured them with a few pieces of bread. I had my camera set up on my tripod so my hands were free to toss out the bread, but this is where I made a mistake. I forgot to turn off Image Stabilization on my lens, so most of my shots weren’t sharp enough to keep. I still got a few good ones, including one where the ducks are racing each other to get to the bread in the water.

This was a great way to start the year! I relearned some things I had forgotten, and I want to take those things I learned during these 3 mornings and keep them in mind throughout the year and not just do the same things repeatedly. I hope you enjoyed the photos I got from this exercise, and if you did you might also like the video below that goes with them where you hear some of my thoughts as I was going through this exercise. Until next time, bye for now.