Posted by baobab (Cambridge, United States) on 31 January 2008 in Animal & Insect.
brussels belgium january 2008
your comments feedback and suggestions are always welcome - thanks
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Beautiful series of photos!
31 Jan 2008 1:46am
Yep, great series!
31 Jan 2008 10:32am
cool series. the landing one is pretty neat too, but i think i like this one better because there seems to be more of a visible difference between the first and last shots.
3 Feb 2008 6:12pm
@danthro: Visible difference as in position of the swan's wings?
He was beating his wings really hard on the way up (and not making that much forward progress), whereas for landing he was mostly holding his wings aloft to slam on the brakes, but skidding across the water at high speed.
I was very lucky with the timing of the landing shots. He was moving very very quickly and I caught sight of him as he came in to land, so was fortunate to catch the moment of initial touchdown in the first shot - you can see the V of his wake, but no splashes from prior bounces.
in the landing shots, the legs are in the water in the first shot and the last shot, so i can't really tell which one is the beginning and which one is the end...
4 Feb 2008 1:19pm
@danthro: hmm. I think the swan kept hitting the water on take off and on landing. In the series above the top shot is the first in the sequence. He has his feet out of the water in the first two shots but kicks down again (third shot) to get more momentum.
I guess the clue with the landing shot is that in the first shot there is a smooth wake and only one splash, from his very first touchdown. I wasn't quite fast enough to get him before he hit the water. You could also argue that the splashes of water become steadily less intense (i.e. less height/less white) as the landing series goes on.
All of this is made up, since I have no expertise whatsoever about how swans fly, take off or land :-)
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