Black swans at dawn

[Glenn Pure]

Well, I hope I haven't gone too small in the frame here. These are black swans and endemic Australian birds. They have an unmistakable silhouette even from this distance. Image is from a very early morning mid-winter session with mist on the lake surface a short while before sunrise. I saw this shot as I scanned the horizon and could immediately see the potential. My interpretation of colour here is largely subjective and based on memory of what the scene was like: quite subtle and mostly neutral. This is full frame width and some taken off top and bottom for composition. Taken at Lake Curalo which is a coastal lake at Eden on the south coast of New South Wales.

I hope you enjoy it and welcome any comments you may have.

Technical: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/125 sec, f7.1, ISO 1250. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, default NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Very light NR applied globally. Sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian blur) after final size reduction.

[William Dickson]

This is a very nice image Glenn. I can 'feel' the wintery morning. The overall frame looks very atmospheric. Lovely colours throughout. I know you like to retain everything within the image. If mine, I would remove the darker item just above and between the two swans.

Good work

Will

[gail bisson]

Very nice. Evokes a moody, mysterious feeling.
I wish the ? outline of a log (above and between the swans) was not visible.
I like your crop and could also see a version with the swans a bit more to the left of the frame.
I really like the layers of blues and greys found within this image,
Gail

[David Seymour]

Hi Glenn,
That's a very beautiful and evocative image, and also has the 'wildlife in environment' and 'small in the landscape' qualities that appeal to me. Nice renditions of the colours and the mist, and the birds still instantly recognizable (at least to an Australian!) despite their small size. One change I'd suggest would be to crop enough off the left to position the birds one-third of the way into the frame, which to my eye seems to balance them a bit better against the line of ghostly trees in the right background. Also, ditto Will's suggestion to clone out the dark shape between, behind and just above the foreground birds.
Cheers,
David

[Glenn Pure]

Thank you William, Gail and David. I welcome your comments and appreciate your time considering this shot. I agree in hindsight that this could be improved with a little off the left. As for the background element between the two birds, I understand your point but ethically not keen on doing this so it will stay for now. Thanks all the same.