looking up

Lucy: It does indeed look like a shell. I like this POV and think it works well. I almost wish you could have gotten a touch lower so the land forms in the BG were masked out by the trunk but this works for me as is. Nice find and capture. >=))>

Always nice to hear from you, Bill. As you can see, I am trying to get my PhotoShop skills up to par. I have, literally, thousands of great photos....But they all need that extra "push" to make them fantastic. Should take the rest of my lifetime???..aargh!

Lucy,

This is quite wonderful and somewhat unique; not only the mushroom being unique, but the view and perspective is well done too. I really like your composition and the gradient of blue in the sky is a nice compliment to the scene.

Looks to me like the sky is a little pixelated from compression. And with that much uniformity and smoothness of color, you shouldn't really have any trouble keeping this one under the 200k and still save with a high quality setting like 8. Hard to suggest without knowing how you are saving your images for the web. Definitely one you want to have looking good on the web though.

Lon

Lucy,

I like the composition here with just a couple of nits to mention. The black shadow area seems completely blocked to me and I'd probably crop it out. I might also consider a crop from the top then to take the format to pano but I would hate to lose any of that beautiful blue. The image seems a touch soft and it might be worth sharpening it some. It's a very interesting subject and image. I agree with you that improving the Photoshop skills is worthwhile.

Pat

Lucy:
I like this mushroom shot much better than the previous. The POV is interesting and the graduated blue sky is really nice. Could do with some sharpening and I would also suggest healing the black spots on the mushroom. Good work, keep them coming.

Pat, I was very reluctant to sharpen the mushroom, as they no longer look soft and frilly. I think a hard edge does not look real...looks like plastic to me.

I was even worried that I sharpened the shroom too much.
Just my opinion.

Gary, you are right about the black spot near the top of the mushroom. I guess after taking so many mushroom photos, I don't see the dirt as noise. In this case, it needs correcting. But in a lot of other shots.....the debris adds"character".

Always respect your comments, Gary...thanks

Lucy,

If you prefer it soft, then that's the way it should be.

Pat