Brogborough Lake Saturday Early

The forecast promised wind, and from a good direction and certainly as I set off, it was living up to that, so after a chat with some of those already, and just unloading, it looked very promising; so I returned to the car and started to set up the camera and Benbo Tripod.

A short while later I had the Sigma 150-600mm on the 5D MkIII body for a change. Normally I go for the 7D MkII as it has a faster burst rate, but it seemed worthwhile checking out just how the different body worked in practice, and I can report that generally it seemed fine, though the distant shots maybe failed to focus accurately on occasion, but that was down to me rather than the camera I reckon! The wind however was not behaving as forecast and was as fitful as the day previous.

There were a few brave souls already on the lake, one of those being Richard McKeating who was not alone in choosing to cover his face well as the windchill was definitely evident. This visit was not going to be a long one for me, but had nothing to do with the weather; I had learned only the night before that my daughter who plays Sax, was due to play at the Fairford Leys Christmas Carol event, and I always enjoy the Aylesbury Concert Band playing.

I set myself up on the pier, and every so often it was severely rocked, and on the second time I looked round to see why – the dog had leapt onto it then back onto the land! I had mistakenly assumed it was one of the waves, even though they had not seemed that large. Sam Barnes was out twice using the Hydrofoil; the second run with greater success.

Since there were not too many takers early on, I did also try to keep my hand in shooting passing cormorants and gulls. I was lucky enough to catch a few jumps performed by the afore-mentioned Richard, but missed one when suddenly I realised my preparations for Lizzy and her Concert had made me make a silly mistake which was not to reformat my Compact Flash card and so it swiftly ran out of space, and to make matters worse, the pre-existing shots were of my last visit to this lake, so working out which had to be deleted was in danger of removing this day’s images. Sorting this out took me valuable time, as I had specifically only put one card in the bag because I needed everything for later in the day.

I stayed long enough only to leave when the wind began to improve, but since I was Roadie for my daughter I could not arrive late and I had to change into smarter clothes before driving over, and, for safety, offload these images, so they were ready on the computer for my return. I apologise for my abrupt departure.