Central Park - Take 2

Yesterday morning was overcast and misty, exactly the type of weather I am looking for in my new project to photograph nature in New York's Central Park. So off to the park I went with Nikon D800 and an assortment of lenses.  This time I covered the area around The Pond at the lower end of the park.

My first surprise was when this heron decided to take off and pass right in front of me. Fortunately, I had the 70-200mm f/4 zoom on the camera and was able to snap off several spontaneous frames. I was lucky enough to grab a couple of nice frames of the bird in flight. This is where I wish I had the D4 with its super fast  motor drive.

The main reason I choose overcast and misty conditions for shooting is to obtain soft backgrounds and white skies in shots like this.

I have been converting some of the images to a platinum monochrome tone such as this. These I am planning to use in a limited edition book.

I found this little waterfall at the remote end of the pond, and was able to slow the exposure down to 2 seconds by using a polarizing filter and f/22. The slow speed gave me the flowing water effect and the polarizer helped to saturate the greens by removing specular reflections.

If you read my previous post, you'll know that I started carrying a Tamron 90mm macro lens with me to have a longer focal length when doing close-ups. I love the bokeh background in this shot achieved with an aperture of f/5.

One reason I like photographing on overcast days just after a rain is for shots like this of water drops on a leaf.

Craggy trees and large stone outcrops are part of the natural terrain of the park. As I was taking this photo, the sun began to break through the clouds and I called it quits for the day.

 

Late May and early June is my favorite time for shooting woodland scenes. The leaves are full and a lush green and flowing water is usually at its peak.