Reduce photos on Flickr

As I walked through the park this day, I saw many of God's creations. There were ducks and geese, grackle, finches and other songbirds, Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets, a blue Kingfisher, squirrels, a cat, pigeons and mourning doves, hawks and perhaps falcons, as well as painted turtles, and various trees and other plants and animals. Such diversity in God's creation!

Several of the Great Blue Herons were in their nests, and others were in their trees.

At the very least, the photos show resilience in God's creation. Despite such a bad storm, and such deep flooding, the plants and animals of the park continue to survive. Bluer days ahead.

We can be thankful that storms are momentary, and eventually pass. After all this gray weather during Winter, and the barren trees, I look forward to sunnier days and spring growth. In fact, I noticed a few trees this day that were budding, ready to start opening spring foliage.

Pigeons and other small birds took to the wing and flocked about toward evening. Ducks continued to weave through wet trees and around wet pick-nick tables. dry mud coated all the groundcover and smaller plants, the tables and seats, the feet of the trees and poles, even hanging down from the undersides. Wet mud was still scattered about as well, and duck poo was atop tables where the duckies decided to dry their own feet over the past few days.

After the storms the prior weekend, the park had flooded, quite deep in some places, but 4 days later, the waters had largely subsided and receded, though some spots were still awash in at least a few inches of water. Perhaps a few feet here and there.

Some of the pools of water had a strange bluish tinge in them. Sorry, I didn't capture that on film or digital. I probably should have, as it was unusual in the otherwise murky water. There was an earthy scent to the air in the park this day, and I didn't feel so well after I left the park, just as I didn't feel so well on Monday when the park was so flooded. Perhaps a good indication not to go around standing water or deep runoff after a storm.

I wasn't really thinking about that when I went to take the photos, and get out and stretch my legs. Perhaps I should have stayed inside and painted something with my watercolors..

My eyes were a bit bleary, and I had trouble focusing them. That made it more difficult to get things sharp, and some of the photos that I'm posting that aren't sharp look about how things looked to me at the time, so I decided to keep them. Others, I just like how the blurriness looks in the photo. The photos of the turtle especially look about how my eyes felt at times taking other shots.

There was mud everywhere, the sky was overcast, and light was somewhat dim as I tried not to stumble and fall into the muddy puddles. Clay-rich mud covered my shoes, and I found it difficult to hold up my arm at times. I had been taking a lot of photos lately, and my muscles hurt. I think I also injured my arm a few days prior. I found out just how badly a slight shake would show up when using a teleconverter, even though I was shooting fast and medium speed film (Iso 400-800.) Though, with the teleconverter, I sometimes had to reduce the speed down to ISO 100-200.

I decided to use some black and white that I'd been holding on to for a while, as well as some Lomography 400, Lomography 800, Speed 400, and maybe a roll or two of something else.

I did snap a few shots off with a digital so that I could have something to remember what day the film went with, mostly.

P8044548-reduced by Paul