Swan Song

Thank you everyone for indulging me in my latest texture madness craze and for leaving such wonderful comments!

This morning when I got up I received the nicest email from Sharyne for the wonderful blog The Views from My Valley.  Sharyne lives in North Queensland Australia and she had written me to tell me she had tried applying some textures to a beautiful rose photo she had taken.  You can see both gorgeous photos below, and I can't tell you how happy I am that blogging about the joys I get from photography actually made someone want to try using textures for themself.  That's how I got hooked after all, visiting blogs with beautiful photographs and wanting to know more!

 (Photo by Sharyne)

(Photo by Sharyne)

Thanks for sending these wonderful pictures Sharyne, they really are lovely.  If anyone else has been inspired to try images...you know who you are (Yvonne!), then please send me a copy, I would love to see them!

It's been a cold, gray day here in Maryland, but thankfully we dodged the bullet and ended up with only rain.  I got an email from my brother who lives much further north in the state and he is iced in, so I'm happy with cold, gray and rainy for now.

If you've been reading my blog for awhile now, you know that each year in December a group of Tundra Swans winter over here, and it's something I look forward to every winter.  This year however, we've seen very little of the swans.  They've been spending most of their time across the street on the river side where the water isn't frozen.  I've sorely missed seeing these graceful birds and hearing their unusual calls each day, so when they appeared on our creek today I knew we needed to try and take some pictures.

I used the term "we" because when they showed up early this morning I was still in my PJs and wasn't really too anxious to go outside and take pictures.  It meant lugging a tripod, putting the big telephoto lens on, and then the teleconverter I got for my birthday which helps increase the magnification of the lens.  Now I know that doesn't sound like a lot of work, but when you have to then bundle up and drag the stuff through the woods, so that you don't spook these timid creatures, it sometimes takes the charm out of trying to capture them.

Add to that the fact that we have about 6 bazillion swan photos, none of which ever seem to turn out, and I was really not motivated to go.

Thankfully I married well, and Mr. Tide wasn't so pessimistic, or maybe lazy, so he gathered up the equipment, threw on his coat and scarf and headed out to try once again to get a photo of these beautiful birds.

The teleconverters are really meant to be used with much better lenses, better lighting, and higher quality camera bodies.  I use a Canon Rebel XTI (a consumer grade camera) which is now almost 4 years old, and none of my lenses are professional grade, so I'm sure we would have better luck with these difficult (at least for Mr. Tide and me) to shoot subjects if we had better equipment.  Yes, that's me whining about not having professional grade equipment...sorry, but I drool when I see professional photographers and their awesome equipment!  That's my way of prefacing these photos by saying that they are a bit grainy but I want to also add that these are some of the best photos we've ever been able to take of the swans...so of course Mr. Tide will have bragging rights for a bit.

As you can tell by the photos above, the swans aren't opposed to walking on the ice to get to the open water along the edges of the creek.  What I do find funny though is how they will sometimes choose the ice over the free flowing water.  In the photo above, they are all actually sleeping standing up!

The title of this post is Swan Song, and I'm sure some of you have wondered where that phrase comes from.  It's most often heard when describing  someone's final appearance, career farewell, or even their demise.  I decided to do a little digging via Google and here's what I found about the origin of this interesting phrase.  The info below comes from Wikipedia...where else!  To read the entire excerpt and to see examples where this saying has been used throughout literature, in song, and plays you can click here!

The phrase "swan song" is a reference to an ancient belief that the Mute Swan (Cygnus olor) is completely mute during its lifetime until the moment just before it dies, when it sings one beautiful song.^[1]

Mute Swans are not actually mute during life – they hiss – and they do not sing as they die. 


So do you ever recall someone making their Swan Song?!

Here is a lovely song entitled Swan Song.  The lead singer has a beautiful voice!