Meet the Easter Bunny! Well, it was a bunny seen on Easter weekend, though it seemed to have missed the memo about leaving eggs and chocolate in its path.
Easter Saturday was a bright, sunny day: blue sky, spring-like, a perfect day to spend some time outdoors. As soon as we had finished with the morning errands, we headed to Halls Road in Whitby, a great area to be surrounded by nature and away from computer screens. While birds are a staple here, one never knows what else one may run into: deer, muskrat, beaver, jumping mice, raccoons, rabbits … If you have kids, this is an idyllic place to bring them to experience nature. Between Halls Road and the Lynde Shores Conservation Area (of which Halls Rd is a dividing line), magic may be found. Black-oil sunflower seeds and peanuts can bring chickadees, nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, blue jays and chipmunks to your hand. The rabbit shown here was attracted to millet that had been left on the path. Added to the sounds of the chickadees, cardinals, blue jays, doves, sparrows, nuthatches are now the songs of the newly returned red-winged blackbirds, swans, increased number of Canada Geese (many still do migrate) and other migrants, either passing through or setting up territories for the summer breeding season. Wild turkeys also roam the area and you never know when you might see them.
Given my druthers, I may have preferred to have been on the other side of the path so that I could have had better lighting on the rabbit. However, it would have been impossible to move around it without scaring it off, so I took advantage of the situation presented to me. I rather love the rim lighting along its back and the light showing through its ears. I also love the colour tones of the image. The muted winter colours work well with the colours seen in the bunny and there was enough light so that there is a catchlight in its eyes. If there hadn’t been other people around, I would have tried shooting right on the ground to have it silhouetted better against the blurred background. I did shoot as low as I could on a narrow path populated with others oohing and awing at the cuteness of the scene. Add in a little girl who was trying to give it more millet without scaring it (I tried for a shot with her, but didn’t have the right lens and her brother kept blocking me) and the cuteness factor grew.
For those unsure of what the term ‘depth of field’ means, this is a great example. See that narrow area that is in focus? Everything in front and behind is out of focus? I was shooting with a narrow depth of field (f5.6), which was enough to have the critter in focus but give a nice, non-cluttered background to help show it off. Depth of field can be said to be depth of focus. The smaller the value of the f-Stop number, the less will be in focus in your scene.