Here’s a few shots from a recent early morning visit to Bradgate Park in Leicestershire.
There’s been some lovely winter sun over the last two weeks. This is not exactly typical for January in Northamptonshire which is often grey and rather depressing. Unfortunately for me, most of the winter sunshine has occurred during the week, when I am at work, and the last two weekends were quite disappointing.
Last weekend the forecast was for clear frosty nights and fine sunny days so with this in mind I decided to get up early on Sunday morning and head up to Bradgate Park which is roughly an hour’s drive from my house.
It was certainly a cold and frosty morning, but somebody forgot to order the sun and a blanket of grey cloud covered the sky for almost all my visit. I don’t mind cloudy conditions in general, especially when taking people pictures, in fact cloudy-bright is perhaps my favourite lighting for outdoor portraits.
However, I was disappointed not to see the sun on this occasion as I had purposely made the journey up to Leicestershire specially to take advantage of the winter sun that had been a feature of the preceding week.
Never mind, here are my photos of the frost, the park and the deer. I still enjoyed my visit as I always do here. There’s nothing nicer than setting out up the climb to the Old John folly at Bradgate, camera and monopod in hand, never quite knowing where the deer will be and what opportunities there will be to photograph them.
Unlike last time when it was rutting season, I managed to get quite close to the deer this time, and they seemed oblivious to my presence for the most part, which was ideal. I also looked for other photo opportunities while I was there, including the many runners and walkers who frequent the park, some of which I have included here.
To see more of my photos from Bradgate Park over the last 12 months, please check out my gallery here.
Geoff
Photographer Geoff Oliver 