BUANASENI

Title: The Black Swan
Medium: Photography
Photographer: Johan Ishak
Time/Date: 8:00 pm, {Date not recorded}, 1998
Place of creation: Lake off Moondine Drive, Wembley, Perth
www.buanaseni.blogspot.com

years of living in Perth introduced to me a special species of swan, the Black Swan. As I know it, I don't think you can get Black Swans anywhere else in the world. Even if you can, they'd probably imported them from Australia. This magnificent creature is majestic. Pure black feathers, black peak (sometimes red) and can stretch their wings to a length of 2 to 3 metres or so (combined both sides).

So I decided to snap a photo of these swans at a lake nearby my apartment in Wembley, Perth. I cannot remember the name of the lake but it was certainly by the road leading to my apartment, the Moondine Drive. I couldn't get near them fearing being attacked by them. What was more worrying were not those swans. I was more worried about the tiger snakes that lived in the same habitat. A wet swampy lake with plenty of frogs as their dinner with the December summer sunlight attracting these snakes to sun bath on the greens. They are, after all, listed in the top-5 most poisonous land snakes in the world. Naturally, I snapped from far.

It was already 8:00 pm at that time and the sun was disappearing replacing the sky with a blanket of orange-red inferno like clouds stretching from the space above me all the way to the horizon in front. It was difficult to get a good shot. By the time I got a steady shot of a hen-swan with its baby swimming (or floating rather), it was already dark enough not to reveal the details of the swans. Since the swan is black anyway, I figured, what the hell, a silhouette would do. Hence this shot, "The Black Swan",... from far.

Dedicated to my frineds of the good ole Perth days: Din, Fos, Amil, Zam, Lili, Pi'e, Shuk, Shidi, Nan, Hatta as well as my Aussie friends Will, Nick, Webbers, Christine, Stephanie, Georgina and others from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu.