So after a fairly eventful week in Europe, which involved falling down a considerably large hill and somehow emerging unscathed in Croatia, I’ve finally started going through the pictures!  This week’s Picture of the Week is a shoutout to my friend Grace, who has an odd fascination with the below picture from Lake Bled in Slovenia (which I took about two years ago):

a white bird standing on a dock near water

Ok it’s not that odd of a fascination, I love the picture as well (to me it looks like the swan is in a shampoo commercial the way it’s shaking the haters water off.  As I was about to leave on my trip she reminded me to take a picture of any swans I saw.  I tentatively agreed.  As my trip took me from Austria into Slovenia I decided to stop by Lake Bled on my way to Ljubljana (it’s not that far of a detour).  I went to one of my favorite photo spots, Sony a7rIII in hand.

The weather was kinda gross and flat so I decided to go for some black and white shots of Bled Island, which were turning out well WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN A SWAN HAPPENED.  It was just chilling swimming over and then struck an incredibly solid modeling pose, which led me to believe this was the same swan as the picture above.  So not only did I get a great black and white shot of Bled Island but it also included a swan, which I named Regina.  Enjoy this week’s picture of the week!

a swan in the water

For the photographers: I took this with my Sony a7rIII and my trusty 24-70GM lens.  EXIF info was as follows:

  • Aperture: f2.8
  • ISO: 100
  • Shutter Speed: 1/1000
  • Focal Length: 62mm

I wanted the swan to be crisply in focus with the island blurred out so I threw the lens wide open for this shot.  I only had a few seconds to get the shot so I’m glad my a7rIII autofocused in the exact place I was thinking.  I snapped away, made just a few adjustments in Lightroom (mainly boosting the shadows), then sent it into Nik Silver Efex Pro 2, pretty easy post processing.  What do you think?  Let me know in the comments below!

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