I was visiting my parents at their trailer last night at Presqu'ile Provincial Park on the north shores of Lake Ontario and had just finished supper when I decided to grab my camera and go for a drive.
I honestly didn't expect to get much of anything and planned to only be gone for about 30 minutes. I wanted to get back for the always enjoyable campfire with family and friends.
Actually, I probably wasn't much longer than 30 minutes but I did stop once to watch a Mute Swan and two of her young feeding in the calm waters of what's known as the Calf Pasture. This used to be a boat launch area to get out into Brighton Bay from inside the park. Now for some reason they frown upon this. Who knows the thinking behind it. We used to drive a hovercraft over there when I was a lot younger because it was a lot more calm than the lake.
Anyway...the three swans that were feeding honestly weren't providing much in the way of quality photo opportunities. Certainly nothing I hadn't already photographed a dozen or more times before.
All of a sudden I heard a noise of wings hitting the water and I swung around to spot the mate of the swan getting airborne and racing right at me. I'm guessing he probably didn't like the fact that I was intruding on his kids supper activities.
I only had a few moments to bang off a couple of quick frames. I didn't have time to change my focus type, shutter speed or anything for that matter. I would have loved to have my Nikon D7000 in high burst mode to rattle off more shots but instead I quickly focused and shot about 4 frames.
He landed in the water and I started moving back to let him know I got the message. As I walked back to the car I did a quick review of the photos on the camera and was encouraged by what I saw but there was no way of knowing how good the quality of image would be until I got it on my computer.
As you can see above, I had at least one shot that was fairly sharp and contained some nice action as the swan was touching down. The sunlight was rather harsh as it was setting and very bright but overall I think I was able to work around that issue okay and captured an image I could live with and be a little proud of. These birds are so powerful I could photograph them landing and taking off all day.
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