Watching Me Watching You

This afternoon I had a chance to go out to take some photos so I went down to the duckpond with my camera and the telephoto lens. The sky was slightly cloudy so the lighting was perfect for taking photos of wildlife. The soft light doesn’t create harsh shadows on the wildlife.

As I was using a telephoto lens I was using the camera in shutter priority and I chose a shutter speed of 1/250^th of a second. I was using a focal length of around 150mm so this shutter speed is fast enough to take out any motion blur. To get a small enough depth of field I used an aperture of F5. And because I was using an aperture of F5 and there was a lot of light I was able to use a low ISO of 250, this keeps the noise levels to a minimum.

To edit the photo I cropped the image down and changed the levels. By cropping the image into a square I was able to create a composition where the swan looks towards the duck; and the duck looks off to the left. I adjusted the levels by increasing the contrast and decreasing the brightness. By increasing the contrast the photo looks more ‘punchy’ and the difference between the white and the black on the swan is much more pronounced.

I really enjoyed going to the duckpond again, it was very tranquil and I had the whole place to myself. Also while taking my photos I had a good chance to relax and de-stress. This just proves that photography is more than just a hobby or a profession, it also a very good relaxation technique.

Mat