Maybe somebody put the spell on me: the latest time I have been out taking photo with decent weather was at the beginning of January. Since then, if I’m busy with my work the weather is mostly fine; if I’ve got some free time the weather is certainly bad. Anyway the serious wildlife photographer won’t be put down by this.

So, today, on the shores of Lago d’Iseo, after complaining about some miserable, dull photos of greater grebes, I searched for swans — and luckily I found them. Then I searched for a perspective that gave me a dark background (the shadow of a bridge) and at last I was able to get some good photos — I even rated some as top keepers. The bright white of the swans against the dark shadow made for a high contrast, requiring just a bit of level adjusting to darken blacks, and the almost black & white look prevented the images from looking dull. Moreover the swans were pretty much tame, so I was able to do a couple of intimate portraits.

I only had troubles with the light meter. These are the classic subjects where spot metering is the best, but I had troubles in keeping the sensor on the birds, since they was swimming quite fast; and I was so stupid that I didn’t think of getting the good exposure and lock it. So I had a few burned out photos, and on others I had to do some heavy correction in post-processing (even +1 stop). Anyway I’m pretty pleased by the results.