Bad weather is supposed to be the photographer’s best friend but today I have serious doubts about it. Snow, sleet, rain. Not that it would stop me, of course, so I went for a walk. Since there’s almost nothing to see anywhere at this point in time, I walked down to the flood plains (don’t know what else to call them) and came across a whooper swan there. It was calmly walking away from me, no panic, so I took my chances and tried to get a bit closer, keeping some trees between me and the swan. Well, predictably, the swan didn’t care for my company and took off (sorry!) but before disappearing, it circled around the field and gave me an opportunity to try a flight shot. Things were happening too quickly to change any settings in the camera so the shutter speed was too slow for the approach shots, but when it was flying past me, I just followed it with the camera and the panning actually worked! Not a prize winner, obviously, but I don’t have enough flight or panning shots to get picky as yet.