Last Day of 2020

The last day of 2020, here at least, was covered in a dense fog for most of the day. I kept eyeing it out the window thinking McAlpine Creek Park would be really fun to make photographs at right now. It didn’t look like it was going away so I packed my gear and headed out the door. I could of rode my bike but the drive is a little faster.

I get there and it starts to rain. Dark Sky is usually pretty accurate on these things and said it wasn’t to start raining for another hour. Hoping the drizzle would let up (it did) I set off to find a spot near one of the bodies of water in the park. The more spooky, swampy one was perfect in this fog. I get the 500c set up, loaded up some Ektar 100, framed a shot and metered. It wouldn’t fire. Oops, forgot to remove the dark slide. It’s a common thing to forget. Alright, dark slide is out. Here we go. Camera doesn’t fire. Try to detach the lens to get a look. Lens is stuck. Oh no.

Long story short; looks like I’m sending the Hasselblad in for that CLA earlier than I thought.

So a little bummed I can’t get any shots with the hasselblad. I snap some photos with the M6 and packed the Hassy up. As I started to walk back to towards the other body of water I noticed the crane in a tree. I say the crane because he’s always around. I quickly got my 90mm Tele-Elmarit out, it’s the longest lens I have on me. Snapped a couple of frames and then he flew down to the edge of the water. I thought, this is incredible I can probably get fairly close with this lens.

A jogger comes up from behind me and runs right past the crane. Just a few feet from it and the crane couldn’t have been less bothered. Now I’m thinking I can get really close. I get a few frames of him on the edge of the water as I walk by. A woman walking her dog behind me was nice enough to stop moving every time I stopped to take a photo. After the crane flew off I thanked her and continued down one of the paths.

In the middle of the swampy looking water there’s a tall, skinny cross. If I’m not mistaken it usually has bird houses made from gourds hanging from it. But now it’s bare. And standing reflected in this murky body of water, surrounded by dense fog made for a pretty cool image. How on earth do they get out there to hang more bird houses on it?