Ah well, can’t win ‘em all

Ok, don’t tell me, I know… the above pic leaves something to be desired in terms of… well, pretty much everything really.
However, there’s a reason I uploaded it, which is…

Today found me loitering in one of my favourite photo-taking spots (for reasons that I will relate in a mo’), namely, along the river in Bedford.

Having sauntered along the riverside snapping away, I crossed over a bridge and started to return along the path back toward the town centre. Spotting some potential shots I shambled down to the river’s edge, in so doing passing a bush on my left.
Unbeknown to me there was a heron lurking therein which promptly took flight at my arrival.
Fired off a coupla quick shots (of which the above is, sadly, the best… you can just about make out a rear view of the bird in flight at roughly the centre of the pic) but downheartedly realised I’d have done far better using the long lens.
“Downheartedly” because the other camera with that lens attached was still in my relatively new photo-backpack!

These backpacks are all well and good but I think I still prefer shoulder bags for carrying photo kit, security issues notwithstanding. Aside from anything else, its a jolly sight quicker getting cameras out of them! (Which reminds me, I keep meaning to do a sort of informal mini review of the various bags and pouches and stuff I seem to have acquired for carrying photo gear. Hmm. Must really get around to doing that one day.)

However, heron had come to rest on the opposite bank so, after a moment’s hesitation, I scrabbled around to drag the long lens camera out of the backpack. But no good. By the time I was ready to shoot anything at all heron had taken to flight again, and had disappeared I know not where.

Now why this merits mention is because this, despite my years of loitering by the river, is only the second time I’ve seen heron along its banks… the first occasion being last week (see previous post, “Bit of a mixed day“)!
Maybe its the same bird, maybe its another one. I dunno. But I now feel doubly blessed. Or I would, had I managed to get a decent shot of it! Curse my decision for only having the one camera out and ready.

Which brings me neatly to the second part of this particular post, and another sorry tale…

Wandering into town on a rather urgent mission (something to do with paying a bill I’d somehow managed to overlook) naturally I had my photo gear with me (bloody stuff seems to be attached to me wherever I go).
And as it was a surprisingly sunny day, even though I wasn’t particularly in the mood for taking a load of pics methinks “Aha, I could wander along by the river and have another play with the polarising filter.” (Last time was quite a while ago now.)

So I did. But decided I’d only put one on my sort of general-purpose walkabout camera with the 18-55 lens.
But somehow things just weren’t working. Couldn’t get quite the right amount of polarisation I wanted (afterthought: maybe I would’ve done better adjusting the filter when looking toward the direction of the sun, as I did last time, than with it behind me. Hmm). Couldn’t get the exposure right. Or so it seemed from looking at results in the LCD which, as I’ve previously discovered, is a pretty naff way of doing it anyway.
Would’ve done better simply trusting my growing familiarity with all the settings. Huh. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing. And everything I looked at I seemed to have shot about a thousand times already. Perhaps its about time I looked for a new “favourite spot”.
Anyway, end result was I ended up with a load of monumentally uninspiring shots. But, not to be beaten, once I got back home I spent a few hours sifting through them and managed to assemble some of the rather less uninspiring ones into an almost reasonable batch for upload.

Ah well, can’t have a good day every day I s’pose. (Even occasionally would be nice though!)