This is the behind the photo – part 3, where I dive into one of the photos I have made recently. I will explain how I made the photo and tell you all about the story behind it. If you’d like to read the previous part of this blog series, please click here.

About the photo

Before I tell the story behind the photo, I will explain what the photo actually visualize. Standing from a high angle, we look down upon a bird swimming in the water. The path he swims is leaving ripples in the water behind him, which gives a nice diagonal line across the picture. On the foreground we see some green/yellow looking grass which gives a strong contrast with the blueish color of the water.

The camera settings

For this photo I used the Sony a7 iii with the 28-75mm lens. The camera setting are 75mm, 1/100, F/4.5 and ISO 100.

How I took the photo

I was walking around this beautiful town that has a high defense wall surrounding it. When climbing on top of this wall, you can look across the water which is stunning to say the least. There were a lot of birds in and around the water. With almost no wind at all, the water surface stayed very calm. At that point I saw one of the birds swimming alone across the water and it was the perfect moment to take a picture.

I choose to come lower to the ground the catch the grass in front of my lens. I wanted to create more depth in the picture this way. Also, the grass makes it look more interesting and dynamic. The picture has a lot of contrast and textures, but with the minimum of colors it still feels calm.

How I edited the photo

I cropped the photo a bit to get the composition I was looking for. The contrast was something I spend some time on to make it look more dark and mysterious. Also, I prefer to bring down the red tones, so the green and blue stand out more. This also helps to intensify the mood of the photo. Especially the details in the water was something I wanted to keep, since it’s not too distracting and brings a nice pattern across the whole photo.

For more of my pictures, check out my Instagram by clicking here.