A solitary swan swims on the calm waters of The Lough as the sun disappears at the end of the day.
Believe it or not, this is a 10 second exposure that turned out much better than I could have hoped! I balanced my camera on the edge of the Lough, set it to Aperture priority mode at f/11, dialed the exposure down two stops, flipped up the camera flash and took the shot.
How does this work?
- By setting the aperture to a fairly high value little light is let into the camera sensor.
- By setting the exposure down two stops the whole scene will be underexposed but bright areas will be exposed mostly correctly.
- Given the above settings, any dark moving objects will be completely invisible so when the flash fired it picked out the swan swimming past and even created a nice reflection in the water.
Hope that helps!
| Aperture | ƒ/11 |
| Camera | Canon EOS 20D |
| Focal length | 10mm |
| ISO | 200 |
| Shutter speed | 10s |
12 replies on “The lonely swan”
corksurf has posted a comment:
Fantastic shot! Don’t you just love it when things like that turn out so well.
luciano7 has posted a comment:
I agree with corksurf, a fantastic shot and what a feeling when the pic turns out better than expected. I like the night time yet with day breaking just over the hills. that swan was still for ten seconds??
xeer has posted a comment:
Thanks for commenting! Luciano7 – I didn’t need to worry about the movement of the swan because it was so dark.
Remember, this was a 10 second exposure, very underexposed, so anything that wasn’t emitting light itself would have been completely dark.
From experience, I know that if I tried to expose properly the light in the background would have been blown out, and the swan would have been a ghost except where it is lit up by the flash.
By deliberatly underexposing I got a really sharp swan instead!
that is a stunning photo…truly lovely
Stunning! Outstanding photo, and thanks for sharing how you managed to capture this, really interesting!
Ragorder.com has posted a comment:
this is sweet. thanks for sharing, and most importantly thanks for sharing the technique. the reflection really tops if off. congrats !
Gorgeous!
[…] The lonely swan […]
patio_ has posted a comment:
Hey cousin, I just wanted to let you know that I am enjoying all those wonderful pics that you take.
scribeoflight has posted a comment:
An unusual shot. I might crop it a bit differently, but I’m not sure. I really like the fact that I’ve never seen a shot of a swan at night before.
baedo has posted a comment:
That’s and incredible shot! Just wonderful.
Awesome image of the lonely swan! I really do love swans! I’m a swan!