For those that have never been it's a massive park, with an old Tudor Hall, a neo-classical mansion, 50 acres of landscaped gardens and about 100-acres of parkland. Plenty of photographic opportunity whatever your taste.
Top on my list when we visited was the opportunity to take some shots of the deer. The park has herds of both Fallow Deer and Red Deer and offers a great chance to get close to these spectacular animals.
With the parkland being so vast it can still take while to track down the herds, but once you find them then there really is no trouble with getting in close. A serious word of caution though - if you do visit please do give the animals some respect and maintain some sensible separation. Whilst we were there there were some idiots who saw fit wander directly through the herd with a loose dog. Mindless at its best to say the least.
Our first encounter was of a few scattered animals rather than the main herd and we were able to maintain a reasonable distance whilst still getting close enough for some decent shots. I'll freely admit to being no expert wildlife photographer and regularly suffer from lens envy in situation such as these, but I was still able to get some pleasing shots as the animals grazed in the slightly misty conditions.
After stopping a short while for a picnic in the grass the main Red Deer herd made an appearance - running in from stage right through some scattered trees. Luck was on our side and the herd paused directly between us and the main hall, allowing me to get the shot below. Some extra focal length would have been nice, but I was still pleased to get a shot of the stag with the hall in the background. Exposure was also tricky here - I wanted enough depth of field to provide some focus to both the hall and the stag, but still needed to maintain enough shutter speed to shoot hand-held at 300mm. I ended up settling on ISO400, f/7.1, 1/400s which provided a nice overall compromise.
With our young daughter now more interested in getting to the play area it was time to wander back through the park, pausing occasionally to watch the deer and also to spot the fungi growing alongside the path.
A successful day out and highly recommended if you've never been - especially at this time of year. I'm sure we'll be back again in the not too distant future.
