Cotswold Farm Park
For my latest works, I opted for taking full advantage of birthday celebrations for a day off and a few family outings.
Our first port of call was to Cotswold Farm Park. For this trip I was opting to explore nature photography a bit further.
We arrived and headed to the Touch Barn to allow little Casper to get up close and personal with the animals. We then moved on the the next shed, where to our amazement, we were able to see a large number of ewes being tended to as they delivered their offspring. Live.
Taking advantage of the zoom on my lens (18-135mm) I was able to capture a few glimpses of a lamb being delivered.
From this angle we were able to witness 5 lambs being brought into the world. It seems that we had timed our visit impeccably well as the we overheard that the ewes were in their peak delivery period which stands within a narrow window of 9 – 14 days in their normal cycle. Coupled with the fact that 5 is an unusually large litter for sheep. We felt privileged to have been able to see nature’s majesty at its finest.
We had a brief walk around the farm grounds to look at the rare breeds of goats and cattle that live there. With the weather being colder than expected we opted for a regroup over lunch.
Revitalised, we ventured back out as the sun made an appearance from behind the clouds. Taking full advantage of this, we wandered round again, making the effort to explore some of the more private conservation areas too.
After a final walk around, it was time to head home for the all important birthday cake. No mention of candles.
From a photography point of view, I was quite pleased with the results of the shoot. As a newbie to DSLR photography, getting to grips with focussing, exposure and apertures requires a bit more consideration than I had anticipated.
Having been spoiled by the easy to use point and shoot cameras in the past, experimenting with this camera is far more of a learning curve. I have been mostly relying on automatic focussing and shooting modes to help me get a feel for what photography really is about.
For this shoot, I have switched over to manual modes for the most part. Whilst the photos aren’t compelling or outstanding in my opinion, I am happy that I’ve got some decent looking images there, along with a few inventive snaps. As a platform to build on, there is plenty to feel positive about.
In the editing room as it were, I am turning to Lightroom. New to the software, I’ve had a go at editing the images. Having looked at the images on a second screen, I felt the colours looked too exaggerated and over saturated. After a second visit, the images are looking much better.
Next time, I think I will investigate more experiments with apertures to see what effect this will have on the same image with the same conditions. When it comes to the edit, I believe less tinkering will result in a more natural look perhaps with the extra bit of detail or emphasis on the right parts of the image.
(Part 2 coming soon)