Mute Swan ♂

That last one is way improved. Beautiful image!

I like DSC_2815-1-2 (Top image of two posted together) best. It looks even better on Flickr. The slight yellowish is more natural, especially on the underside view, and allows more detail to show in the whites. An exceptional image in every way!

Joe

Great capture composition is great, beautiful.

Love the reposts. Powerful image.

Bravo !

i fell in love with the original shot....i think it has a more spiritual feel to it .....

WOW! I would love to know moew about how this was shot.

I noticed this very same type a shot years ago in my files of swans that I had taken, but never followed up on the concept to get that perfect rendition as this is. Not much to improve on this one though. The yellow cast was a bit much for me too, but the stark white is also off in my opinion. If recollection serves me, there is indeed some slight yellow tinging in the white feathers of swans. My guess is staining rather than natural color but it usually is present. My vote is for a white in between the two, leaning just a tad over the 50% mark in favor of the full white one. I think also like someone else said there seems to be more feather detail in the yellow version over the white so why loose all that. The full white also just looks over the top in a sort of antiseptic way. So the2812-1-2 version is closest to seeming correct to my eye. Little things, but sometimes they make all the difference. Super shot and congrats!

Paul

awesome shot, I like the last one, although I agree a bit more yellow would make it a bit softer and more appealing, as it stands its a bit too harsh. I would also clean up the droplets in the bottom corners.

pleverington wrote:I noticed this very same type a shot years ago in my files of swans that I had taken, but never followed up on the concept to get that perfect rendition as this is. Not much to improve on this one though. The yellow cast was a bit much for me too, but the stark white is also off in my opinion. If recollection serves me, there is indeed some slight yellow tinging in the white feathers of swans. My guess is staining rather than natural color but it usually is present. My vote is for a white in between the two, leaning just a tad over the 50% mark in favor of the full white one. I think also like someone else said there seems to be more feather detail in the yellow version over the white so why loose all that. The full white also just looks over the top in a sort of antiseptic way. So the2812-1-2 version is closest to seeming correct to my eye. Little things, but sometimes they make all the difference. Super shot and congrats!

Paul

Katlady wrote:WOW! I would love to know moew about how this was shot.

How I got this shot? Well, just like what Paul said, you need to perfect your shot. For 2 years, I just tried again and again and again and again... until I finally got the shot I want.

Actually, it all began with this shot I took 2 years ago, which you might have seen on the NatGeo magazine (October 2012, pg16)
http://www.naturescapes.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=215105 As you can see, at first glance, this is really an astonishing perspective, which amazed me too; but from the scrutiny of a photographer, there're also too many imperfections: the exposure wasn't right, the horizon was visible around the neck, the aberration was rampant, the lens flare was present, the background wasn't fully covered, the eye wasn't shiny enough, and the head was too high in the frame... Basically, what this image left me was a mixture of ecstasy and pity. As a perfectionist, I could imagine what a perfect shot should look like, but I wasn't even sure whether it's possible to capture one in reality. So I began my long quest for perfecting this shot, so long that it took me 2 years. Even though I could manage to get close to quite a few swan individuals, birds are birds after all, they behave just whatever the way they like. After going through everything that could possibly go wrong, and perfecting everything that could possibly be perfected, I was finally lucky enough to get this shot within my lifetime. LOL~ Seriously! I could still have been waiting until forever without getting any close to this shot!

So, if you ask me how this was shot, I'd say it's 99% of luck + 1% of patience.