Images by John 'K'

Having been handed a Saturday afternoon without the kids (one at work, one watching her boyfriend perform in a high school band competition [they came 2nd BTW so good job Amador!]), my wife and I decided to head out and explore one of the nearby regional parks that we’d kept saying "we must go there and have a walk around" but in nearly 2 and a half years never did until yesterday.

 

So on a lovely sunny October afternoon, we headed off on the short drive to Shadow Cliffs Regional Recreational Area. Because of the time of year and the time of day, there weren’t many people there – a family finishing up from an earlier bbq, a couple of cyclists, some folks fishing, a dog walker, and us. The park is on the site of an old quarry, but has been converted into lakes, woodland, some nice (and not too long) trails, and has become a haven for many types of birds.

 

We took the new ‘toy’ (Nikon D40x) with us to give it a decent try out. I’m still trying to get to grips with its capabilities, and a lot of the options are still not clear to me (must be old age), but as we walked around, I selected different settings, swapped lenses, and snapped away like there was no tomorrow (thank heavens this is digital!). In the end I took 183 pictures during our 2 hour visit, but I’ve selected some of the nicer ones and put them in the albums. We only threw away 2 (where because of the type of shot and lighting conditions we should really have used a tripod), but were really pleased with the rest. Considering this was later October afternoon, with the sun going (or gone) down, the results really did amaze me. Hopefully you’ll like some of them too. I’m still not too sure I understand all the options on this new toy yet, but even so I can manage to get some nice snaps with it. 🙂

 

As to the park, we’ll be back.

 

Photos are here.