If like me you find yourself drawn to ponds, lakes and rivers at this time of year and you always pack a camera I expect you’ll be tempted to photograph the local swan population.
Swans are without doubt majestic birds, but they are notoriously difficult to capture on film; not because they evade the view-finder, but because of the mass of white feathers that tend to cause burn-out, or hot-spots.
This image for instance is quite cute, but I you look at the bird’s back you’ll notice there is little or no detail in the feathers. This is the effect of burn-out; over exposure in a localised area.
So how can you avoid this loss of detail? The simplest method is to save your photographic skills for those times when the bird is in shade, or when there is a cloud obscuring the sun.
Alternatively, concentrate on close-ups and you’ll find getting some nice feather detail much easier.
The real solution is to use some high-tech metering and adjust the exposure in your camera manually to cope with the conditions; most of us don’t have access to quality spot-meters and invercones though and have to rely on the in-camera metering system, which is so easily fooled by the density of the background and intensity of the swan’s feathers.
Photographing wildlife can be a lot of fun, so don’t be put off by the possibility of poor results and try, try and try again to perfect your own method of avoiding hot-spot situations.
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loiswakeman
Nice post. Many modern cameras have an exposure compensation (EV) control that can be useful for bright subjects on a dark backround: and if you have a digital camera it doesn't cost much to try the same (or similar) shot at, say, -0.5, -1 and -1.5 EV, and see which is the best. Selective use of PhotoShop or whatever can be made later to up the brightness a bit if necessary: but better to be a little underexposed and correct it than to lose all details as you say.