Swan Pond
This scene came about north of Livingston on a very stormy day in the Shields Valley. Taken on the same photo drive as Thursday’s image, we were actually chasing a small hole in a large storm that had settled over the region. We followed it for about 100 miles, always trailing behind and unable to ever catch up - but it’s great just being out there doing what I love. For this specific shot I was more captured by the wind playing on the surface of the water than by the swans themselves, but they added a nice element of grace in an otherwise turbulent landscape. It’s rare that I feel compelled to center the object that stands out most, but it just seemed to work here.
***Updates - I’ve removed the “Share This” functionality because it was causing some problems with my feed by including code that some RSS readers are not accepting. It doesn’t resolve the issues which I polled about a few days ago, but it’s a step in the right direction. I do hope to have similar functionality in place again soon, but in a way that doesn’t cause conflicts with other services. Also, I changed my category name from “BW / Duotone” to “Duotone”. It simplifies things, increases SEO…plus, I don’t ever do straight black and white, so it was a bit misleading. I’m also trying really hard to find a translation plugin that works seamlessly with my theme. It might be that I need to upgrade my template before proceeding, but about half of my traffic is from Europe and I’d like to accommodate those who don’t speak English as much as possible.
I really like the mysterious quality of this photo and the one previous, “On the Way”.
Hey Diane. Thanks for the feedback, I’m starting to work some of my images a bit darker. It’s a technique I haven’t quite figured out yet, but when I do I think it’ll be a good one to have in my ‘bag of tricks’. Black and white/duotone images are all about mood and it’s an ongoing effort to maximize that without ‘corrupting’ the scene. We’ll just have to see how I do as time progresses…