"Swans away"

[Dave Humphries]

Swans by the river - it struck me the similarity with planes, perhaps it's their shape; hence the wacky captions

Best viewed large, they are all 1200 wide; Hit < f11 > then click the picture for the lytebox

"V1, V2, Rotate"

1/3000s f/8 at 200mm iso500

"Keep in formation No.3"

1/4000s f/8 at 95mm iso500

"If I were a plane, this might end badly"

1/4000s f/8 at 95mm iso500

"I'm coming through, break left!"
"*^%~, Ditching, Ditching"

1/3000s f/8 at 200mm iso500

C&C welcome

[Steve S]

Very nice dave, i like them all. The only c&c i can give is , softer light.

[rick55]

Great shots. I think the light really favors #3: pretty much everything you want to see is right there on top, and it really pops.

Cheers,
Rick

[Terry Tedor]

Spectacular! 1 is my favorite. You're right, viewed large is breathtaking. The detail in all the shots is excellent. Well done.

[arith]

There are a lot of swans where I live and they never seem to do the things you would like them to but head in my general direction. This I find amazing and doesn't bother me in the slightest until somebody turns up with a dog and sets them off, this is worrying since these things are actually quite big.

Try and wait as long as I may and all I would get is pics of lazy swans and your shots are all the more remarkable because of the patience required to get them. cheers

[Donald]

Like Rick, I think the light in #3 is just spot-on. Compositionally, #1 has it for me. And ... I'm not sure there could have been a better 'moment of capture' than you have in #1: the alingment of the wings; the fanning of the wing tips; the legs just coming up into the flight position; the trail of water from the legs, the splash remaining from the feet having exited the water. The Golden Moment.

Well done Dave. A successful shoot.

[atlantean]

I think #2 looks more like a painting because the water and the swan blend together as if they were on the same plane.

[ScoutR]

Looks like someone had a good day!

NICE!!! - all of them, and I love the captions. It's really hard to pick a favourite, but I'm kind of partial to #4. It's a one in a million shot that you might not be likely to get again. Same with #2.

ISO 500 looks pretty decent, did you have to do much or any noise reduction?

Wendy

[Dave Humphries]

ISO 500 looks pretty decent, did you have to do much or any noise reduction?

Only the default 100's with Noise sliders on Details tab in ACR, nothing more.

Yes, I was lucky with a few of their antics, and being in the right place at the right time.
I was quite pleased with #4 too, although timing (and hence ideal composition) is a bit off (by a 1/4s or so).

One just has to be a little patient, as Arith says
That said, I don't think I spent more than an hour there.

Here's another formation one - "Closing on your 9, boss"

1/3000s f/8 at 200mm iso500 - a triumph (?) of careful local sharpening over DoF, that gull was way too close really

And this one is about a third of a second after #3 - "Undercarriage? - check!"

1/4000s f/8 at 95mm iso500

Thank you all for the kind comments, I did take quite a bit of trouble not to blow the highlights in PP, even now, they're not perfect, but 'good enough' (hopefully) and of course, shooting in bursts at 3 to 4 fps allows one pick the best compositions.

Cheers,