The Royal Parks Again

I did struggle with naming this post. My current house style is to have ‘Place’, then ‘Return to Place’ or ‘More Place’, then perhaps an ‘Even More Place’ before I eventually give up and just start using numbers. It’s a bit trickier with the Royal Parks, which were a regular shooting location from before I even started this website to the time about 6 years ago when I moved away from London. Rather than trying to figure it all out I decided I hadn’t use the ‘Again’ title suffix, so here we are.

After my last post containing a bunch of photos taken some 13 years ago, this set is a bit more modern. These were all taken on a walk in October 2016, so they’re less than a decade old at least. It was long enough ago of course that I can’t remember much of the walk, so I am piecing it together from the photos myself.

My walk started on the Thames as I headed towards Hampton Court. There I spotted the church where I ended a previous wander around these parts.

Soon I was in the grounds of Hampton Court. There the Long Water is a common photography spot for me. This time I started by focussing on a nest of sorts.

With the nice reflection of the sky, out of curiosity I decided to process a version that was upside down. It’s interesting, but doesn’t quite work I think.

Adjacent to the Long Water are lines of trees, which I’ve also very often used as a spot to shoot some nice perspective shots.

Although this walk was in 2016, these images are part of the backlog of photos I edited during the free time I found myself with during the first Covid lockdowns in 2020 (I know. Shot in 2016, edited in 2020 and posted in 2025. I am on top of my game). Back then I was still partial to using the Nik Collection to produce monochrome (as above) or, like in the alternate version below, faux-analogue edits.

I am also quite partial to interesting textures, especially weathered and aged surfaces. As I got closer to Hampton Court Palace itself, I came across this padlocked gate which had aged nicely.

I soon saw this more grandiose gate, part of the same fence keeping people out of the palace.

Before long I crossed over the road into Bushy Park, another well-travelled spot for me. Coming from the direction of Hampton Court, one of the first landmarks you see in Bushy Park is the Diana Fountain. On this particular day, the clouds were looking fantastic.

As you can see, there were also a few deer hanging around the water. And quite a traffic jam for reasons I can’t remember. There were quite a few deer around other places too.

As you might expect, that helped turn this into a bit of a wildlife shoot.

Luckily the deer were happy to act up for me.

Inevitably I then switched to a telephoto lens to get a bit closer – not that I was far away, based on the shots I was getting with my standard wide angle lens.

As you can see the light was also on my side – and the deer also made sure to perform in it.

Not that they looked that impressed.

This male with the impressive antlers was apparently pretty happy for me to photograph him. Well, not that he looked that happy.

I was also distracted by the fine detail of the algae on the water.

I was soon distracted by a very different sort of wildlife.

To the left of this shot you can just see a herd of wildlife emerging from the bushes. Soon the full herd was visible and I couldn’t resist getting a shot of them.

These weren’t the only odd wildlife I saw – there were also this bunch of people filming a music video.

Soon, though, the deer were back and making a scene.

And that, apparently, was that. Because I don’t remember all the finer details of the walk the set of images just sort of… stops – something that seems to have happened a lot with a lot of these older sets of images.

I haven’t really visited the Royal Parks since I moved out of London. These days I live much nearer to a national park where I tend to go for a wander if I don’t have any other inspiration.

As is my wont, I have picked a selection of images to highlight in the post above, but there is a fuller set of images in the gallery below.