Mute Swan Blasting the Highlights

[denise ippolito]

I learned this technique from Arthur Morris. He first showed it to me in Florida and I was fascinated by the results. He advised the following: set the lowest ISO; set the aperture between f/16 and f/22; turn off AF and focus manually; an exposure between -1 and -2 stops should look pretty good but there will by necessity be lots of blinkies as the bright spots and starbursts are specular highlights. (this is what I wrote in my blog a while back)
I have since learned that you may need to go to -3 stops if the scene is extremely bright.
Kaustubh Deshpande posted this image . He used an f/ 5.6 which resulted in round specular highlights. If you scroll down you will see his results when he used an f/8 for the same image. They were octagon shaped highlights.
Connie Mier posted this image. She did a great job with the technique. She retained a bit more detail in the image and I like that too.
For this one I added some dark blues to the image. I liked the way it looked but you could leave it B&W.

[Kerry Perkins]

Denise, this is a cool technique and great to see people learning it. I like your swan and all the highlights you captured. :cool:

[Connie Mier]

Hey Denise, thanks for posting this and explaining the technique. I really like attempting these shots because it makes me believe that there are bird photo opportunities after 9 am! I like the highlights in your photo very much, you achieved the affect well. My only criticism is that I really don't like the composition and nothing personal against swans, but not liking its pose. If that bird had posed differently with a curved neck, that would have been sweet (I bet you have some). I think I would have liked a more horizontal crop with less of the foreground showing. Water can be such a pain in the a** to work with, don't you think?

It's a working theory in progress, but I think a lower sun angle would give the water the sparkly appearance where as the overhead sun would make the water appear mostly highlighted, like in your shot. Does that make sense? It probably also depends on the water too. Thanks again for presenting this technique here.
Connie

[denise ippolito]

Connie. Thanks, I appreciate your comments. I like the pose and actually waited for it. It's a matter of personal taste. The water in the image above is very shallow and the water was lacing the mud. You can experiment with the technique to get the results you want. Just showing some variations on the effect.:)