It is now almost one year since Covid-19 lockdown in UK and a bit more since my business travel has stopped. Next week I will getting my Covid-19 first vaccine jab but we do not yet have full clarity about the implications on leisure and business travel. The various countries are dealing with the pandemic with different degrees of speed and effectiveness and it is possible that some of the most exotic diving destinations will be on the allowed travel list later than western countries.

Many people have discovered local diving out of necessity and some have also done underwater photography in their bath, however for me this was not sufficient.

Since last year I formally joined a photography club and looked at expanding my interests. In 2020 as I have been staying at home I have taken the highest number of photos to date.

At beginning I thought: how can I reuse some of my camera lenses I use underwater on land? Mostly this was about macro in the garden. Slugs, bees and flowers were part of the first part of the journey.

I soon realised the skillset was similar but not identical and there were specific requirements to be fulfilled.

I then moved into abstract tried some portraits and more night photography. I needed to start investing in more lenses as I was getting more specialised and improving in the task.

I also started some bird photography in the garden using feeders to entice little birds. This proved challenging but I discovered I much more preferred predators and larger birds so I started going on walks locally to photography red kites. I already had a long lens so with a teleconverter started getting better at photographing birds in flight.

All of this has been done locally without the need to travel.

After a short summer break, where I got to do some diving re-discovering the beauty of Sorrento peninsula and the amazing diving on the coast, it was time to get back to England with the somewhat grim prospect of a very dire winter in full lockdown.

And then something happened thanks to the friends of the New City Photographic society I discovered an amazing location on my door step.

Woburn Abbey and deer park owned by the Duke of Bedford and spanning across the towns of Woburn and Ridgmont.

I went there the first time in November and literally fell in love with the location. After many early morning rise and many pictures taken I decided it was time for a video project.

Deer are sufficiently large that are not too difficult to film compared to birds and are extremely rewarding as they tend to stare at you.

The winter season has been an opportunity also for late sunrise which meant not so early wake up calls to get there for the golden hour.

Now that we are coming to the end of the full lockdown scheduled for March 29th I have decided to release a short film to remember what it was during this period and the magic moments I had the privilege to experience mostly on my own in the Woburn Deer Park.

The film will be released on my YouTube channel on Friday 26th of March at 8PM GMT. To make it easier to digest I will upload it in separate parts and if possible as a whole. YouTube is being very slow to process footage in the last months so I hope it will be all up next week.

I hope you will enjoy it. It is a total of 26 minutes of duration out of around 2 TB of video material collected in the months of January, February and March 2021. I will be putting posts on how it was shot in case you also want to expand your horizons…