Black Swans

[ChrisH]

I was interested to see "jprzlyla"'s posting entitled "The Swans in Lakeland", particularly the images of a black swan. I have lived close to the River Thames for over and saw my first black swan only a few days ago.







The first two images look rather odd because the bird is actually standing on the river bank in flood and not floating. He stayed in Marlow for a couple of days and then disappeared. He seemed not to communicate with the white swans and I wonder whether he was ostracized.

[Bobobird]

Nice captures. I like the 2 contrasts in #3.

[terrib]

I like the composition in #3 and as Bobo says, the contrast.

I just recently saw a TV program that talked about the swans on the Thames. I was not aware of the numbers of swans that you have there. Such beautiful birds that I haven't seen often. Thanks for sharing the pics!

[Ken Curtis]

Chris, looks like you had poor light that day judging by the bottom photo. The white on the gull is blown out, and yet if the image were darker, you would have lost the details in the swan. There are also a lot of white reflections from the sky on the water. Did you look at the histogram on your camera? I suspect there were a bunch of bars up against the right side. Given that I had to take the shot regardless of the lighting, I would have adjusted the camera to be sure the bars in the histogram were moved leftward and not touching the right side. Then I would have used software to selectively increase the shadows or darker areas of the swan.