I went back to Haines Park at lunch today for another photo along the shore. There are normally some interesting old boats in this cove, so I crashed through the brush to reach the narrow strip of sand along the water's edge. As I approached, this swan decided to swim up and see if I had any intention of feeding him. I didn't, and in a disappointed huff, he finally swam back out to the center of the cove. That's where I wanted him for this photo anyway, but it did take some patience on my part before he got the "no feeding the swan" message. From a compositional perspective, I really just wanted the swan someplace in the foreground to add some depth to the image. My real attraction to the scene was the tiny boat docked along the far bank and the aging wood appearance in the nearby home.
Post processing started with a classic filter in Topaz B&W FX. I then adjusted adaptive exposure, regions, color sensitivity sliders, boost black, boost white, and contrast. A levels adjustment was added in PSE. I then made a layer of just the sky and brought that back into Topaz B&W FX. The sky was reprocessed with a low key II filter followed by a contrast and adaptive exposure adjustment. In PSE, that layer was blended using a multiply blend mode at 30% opacity.
