The avian foreplay and the Swan Lake inspiration

I was out and about on the Easter weekend, strolling around in the park with my trusty Olympus E510 with the 14-54 lens attached just looking for miscellaneous things to shoot. As a sign of sprint, the ducks and geese are swimming again. For those of you who don't live in places with sub-zero winters, my heart really goes out to some of these brave creatures who for one reason or another, do not manage to migrate South to warmer climates. Most of them do go away, but when I take strolls in the park in the dead of winter, I always inevitably find a couple of them walking around of the surface of the frozen lake with nothing more than their birth down jackets on. Kind of ironic in a way when I walk past them wearing a down jacket of my own...

But I digress.

So I walked past this one goose that was just standing on a branch and thought it cute - almost as cute as the penguins in Boulders somewhere near Simon's Town in South Africa. I stopped and started snapping away. All of a sudden these two other love birds (excuse the pun) came from nowhere, one chasing another, teasing each other. They walked on water like Jesus did (probably slightly faster) and then took off in the sky. All shots on manual exposure.

See how angry the one sitting on the tree was? Makes sense I suppose. If I was single I wouldn't want people making out in front of me.

I was busy downloading the photos from the beach volleyball the previous day and forgot to put the high speed CF card back into the camera, so I was sort of stuck with the slow XD card. This was regretable. Because my camera then had to stop while it was busy writing to the card and I could not take any more photos until this one:

Then my camera stopped again and by the time it was ready, the birds were gone.

Elsewhere, some other geese were enjoying some quality bonding time...

and so were the ducks, although these two are a lot less racist than the typical South Africans. See, even ducks don't have the brown duck / green duck mentality, why do South Africans have this black man / white man mentality? Perhaps it's because ducks don't get "G" for woodwork and don't have a chip on their shoulders.

This was a little slip stream that runs gradually down the river. Elsewhere, there is this much dam wall where the water just rush down. Apparently this little stream offers a more gradual gradient for the salmon to swim upstream so that they can do their business. They obviously can't hop over the massive dam wall.

Another goose...

and it decided to stand on one foot when I was photographing it. Don't know if that's where they came up with the idea of incorporating a goose into a ballet and called it the swan lake? Just a thought. I mean, who on earth would wake up one morning and say to himself, lets make some person dance by hopping around on his/her big toe of his / her one foot...

and while at it, make them wear a leotard?

See, it's spring and everything is mating. If you're single and everything else is mating, then screwed up things get into your head. Screwed up things like leotards.

Screw this. I am going home.

PS: In retrospect, when I said "screw this", it had nothing to do with the ducks or the geese. No animals / birds / chicks were harmed in the production of this blog entry.

Fly away now, little birdies.

On the streets of Niagara, ON

Personally, I think that as much as the denialists argue that there is in fact no global warming, no one can argue that the winter (northern hemisphere) of 2009/2010 was a screwed up one. Just last week, weather.ca published an article entitled "The Winter that escaped Canada" (or something to that effect -- work is crazy busy and I am starting to suffer from memory loss due to Alzheimers in my old age). Elsewhere, in UK and continental Europe, they had the winter that Canada should have had. Not complaining that they stole our winter from us -- and long may it stay that way.

And guess what the crap part of all this is? I think the weather gods are just a bunch of pricks. They teased us with record temperatures of 14 degrees Celcius (for this time of year) on average over the past 2 weeks and then the bastards decided to make it snow on Spring Day. Screwed up sense of humour if you ask me.

Anyways, so I was bored out of my mind last weekend and decided to take advantage of the good weather and took a drive down to the Niagara Falls. So from my own make-it-up-as-I-go-along guide to streetphotography on shooting strangers (in a photographic sense) doing normal day-to-day things in a candid and unposed and natural sort of way without getting my nose beaten in, I went to a touristy place where everyone else had a camera in their hands. Some examples of streetphotography here. Captured the candidness but I must admit that I haven't really captured "the decisive moment". Oh well, it's all part of the learning curve I guess.

So here they are. All pics taken on Olympus E-510 with 14-54mm zoom lens set at 20mm f11. Manual exposure setting: Shutterspeed at 1000th second ISO 400.

The scenic pics will follow later during the week.

Peace out.