One of the first things that you’re taught in photography is that you shouldn’t shoot in the direction of the sun.  If you’re shooting portraiture, it makes total sense.  However, if you know what you’re doing, you can really get some interested effects and colors by taking your camera, pointing it directly at the sun and then firing away.

I’d been shooting this swan for a bit near sunset and had gotten some nice photos of it, but nothing that really spoke to me.  Then I took this.  The scene itself was rather dark; the water was dark-ish and the background was dark-ish.  What made this particular image pop was the fact that the rays of the sun (that I was shooting directly into) lightened up the trees in back of the swan in the photo, giving it an almost 18th century painting feel… hence the name .

The funny part of this lightening is that it’s something that happened purely in camera; a product of the suns rays interacting with the camera’s glass.  Try as you might, you wouldn’t ever be able to see this in real life.