St James's park

If you've read my travel entries on my main mental health and lifestyle blog, you know that 2 dyas after our visit to Nunhead cemetery, we went to St James's park. There are all headed under the keyword UK1018 (as in, October 2018).

Today, I share our photos in this park, most of them shot at its lake and showing various sea-fearing birds. Shots are done with the point-and-shot Kodak Z915, which is a 10MP with X10 digital zoom (maybe a short review shall be published at some point). 


You'll recon this first pic from the title, telling you immediately that I used my own photo. I thought the lake and the sky were quite nice that day and with Gimp's help, I emphasized it a tincybit. 

Generally speaking, the Kodak doesn't deliver the same caliber images as my Fuji, and its manual mode is so limited that I hade to use the automatic one, thus avoiding faffing manual, especially that I was in a socializing situation. In a future trip, I plan to bring my Fuji. 

For this one, I edited mostly levels, contrasts, brightness, white balance, and sometimes saturation. 

I personally love this shot quite a bit, with stark shadows in one side and brithly lit trees on the other one. It's the view from one of the bridges in the park.

I said...birds, seafaring ones at that... here they are, first in the lake, and then, some out of it. 

I'll start with these black swan photos. We only have white here, so it was a different experience actually seing (and not just reading about) black one, although I notice a lot of dark blue tints to it whilst editing, and I couldn't really see that part in the naked eye. This is where the zoom helps, although it might slightly alter color (chromatic aberations occur at times with zooms. I don't know for sure how black and how blue they are, because I was looking at them from a distance, through polarizing sunglasses, in a very bright day!

 My editing shows the best ressemblance to the original photo, just clearer. So, since no other photo seems to have a clear noticeable color aberation, I guess it's a mix of both colors here. Feel free to correct me if you have been in this park and know this more precisely, via comment below. Thank you. 

More black birds... from far, and closer... 

In a group

In two's

But, really, usually, single ones, just like my earlier photos in the park.

I just love the huge natural contrast created in this image, as the sunlight was beaming straihgt at his left, whilst his right was more hidden, creating a very interesing contrast that I only emphasised a bit by altering the shaodws and highlights.  

I did the same here but to a much lesser degree, as the natural contrast didn't yield such a huge variance. It still shows an interesting profile, and they both actually posed for me

This was one of the toughest photos to get and to edit. I used maximum zoom, as it was really far off, and not only fences separated us, but also the lake. I'm quite happy with this end result. Such a cute bird, no ? 

These not only wanted shots, they wanted them up close and personal. They came just a couple feet away and seemed to tell me 'well, mistah?' so, I pointed, snapped, thanked, and they both walked off. I was passé. 

I couldn't decide which of these edits to chose, as I like each for different reasons. It's the same one, but edited with different shadow/hightlight ratios, these one shows the eye and right side a bit lighter, whilst the first photo has such a contrasting effect between the right and left, which is hit by direct sunlight. 

There weren't only birds there! We also saw quite a few squirrels, and though some were courageous and came close to people, such as Ash with whom we met there, most dashed awayreally fast. I'll start with those pics of Ash feeding one, although you won't see Ash himself, only his shoes were in frame as I used max zoom. 

People arrived, and squirrel squirrels away with his nut! 

I missed a baby one who was way too fast for me (I got a blurr) but managed getting this one who was behind a fence, and felt safe enough to munch by a treektrunk on which climbyclimb did another one, moments earlier. 

Aren't they all so sweet??

On the way frm the park to a bakery/café, we passed through Waterloo place, where I shot this pic.