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Photography: Springtime at Coyote Pond

She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
“Winter is dead.”
—A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young

Yesterday, I returned to Coyote Pond to see if it might be a good place to take senior portraits (yes, yes it is). My first visit was during a rainstorm, and I took some of my favorite pictures of birds. This time, the sun was shining brightly and the entire morning felt like magic.

Sure, some of these photos are too bright and the focus isn’t technically perfect, but I’m so in love with these images. The world right now feels unsettling, and I’ve got too many things to think about, but there are still baby geese and turtles and ladybugs. I can’t stop thinking about how much Neil would have loved these photos, and maybe you will too.

Let me know if you have a favorite and have a fantastic day!

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  • Photos taken with the Olympus E-M1 MarkII, using a 14-150mm lens and edited with Lightroom Classic.

41 thoughts on “Photography: Springtime at Coyote Pond”

  3. What I love so much about these is that I feel like you are telling us a children’s book story about these adorable ducklings. I think you could arrange them just slightly differently and you would have a complete story, from start to finish, in pictures. For me, clearly #12 is our main character, and I love that image of them SOOOOOO much. Even if some of the other ducklings of the same color are different, my brain tells me they that same duck; looking at us in #3, smiling up front in #9, head peaked up in #13. Little Phoebe bird, spider, ladybug, the red-winged blackbird are all little characters the duck interacts with along the way.

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  13. #9 made me go “Awwww!” I’d swear it was an illustration for a children’s book, especially with the baby goose’s smile.

    #14 and 18 also made me smile, because I associate this part of the Central Valley with oak savannah, which I missed so much when I lived in the Midwest. There’s a stereotype of California being all beaches, palm trees, desert, and redwood forests, but the ancient oak trees with their curling trunks and limbs looming over grassland and rolling hills are to me distinctively Northern California. You picked a wonderful park for senior photos! I was there years ago and saw several photographers taking shots of bridal parties and grads in high school colors. The pond was kind of murky when I was there (because of the drought back then) but the surrounding landscape made me wish I had brought a sketchbook. Good luck with your photo shoots!

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    • Thank you for all this! Yeah, I think that little goose wants me to write a book about him. He practically wrote it himself!

      I’m so glad I found this park and can’t wait to take more photos here. I’m going to try and drag out a few of my family members too and do some family shots. I bet it would be fantastic for weddings with all the green, wild flowers, and incredible trees. I love Northern California.

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