Without a doubt, my favourite time of day is the time around dawn. I recently spent this time in the Petite Camargue, and its been showing it's very best dawn side.
I arrived at Petite Camargue in the calm still of the dawn light. The low mist rolling over the meadows, was starting to ignite with the first stray rays of sun light, and with them came the beginning of the dawn chorus.
Walking towards the lake I was hoping that the mist would be there too. As you can see from the title image, I wasn't disappointed. The atmosphere that the mist added to the lake was haunting.
There were a few water fowl floating on the lake, but what really stood out were the Mute Swans. Their larger size compared to the other birds, and the pure white colour helped them to stand out a little more in the mist, but it still left the impression of ghosts drifting across the lake.
A Tufted Duck swimming alone across the water. The composition spoke to me because of the colours and the similarity between the petals lying on the surface and the eye of the Tufted Duck.
I got distracted by this Coot on more than a few occasions. I got the impression that it believed that it owned the lake and was doing its best to protect its territory for everything that got too close. As it's not such a small lake, it spent a lot of energy flapping just enough so that it could run across the surface of the lake.
This White Wagtail spent some time hopping around on this half sunken tree trunk. I have a few images from this moment, but I like this composition the best. The light and the reflections work particularly well and that the Wagtail appears to be studying its own reflection rounds it off.
I took a longer route through the forest back to the parking space and came across this. Spiders and insects are not creatures that generally come across that well, but nevertheless ones that speak to me and ones that I keep coming across. This composition stood out as I was fascinated by the way that the light fell at just the right angle to make the web light up and the spider glow.
