Sony a300 with kit 18-70. The lens isn't all that great but if I am careful I can do pretty good with it. My next purchase will probably be the Zeiss 16-80 but for now I have to shoot with what I can afford. I thought I would never use the live view but with the tilting screen it can actually be quite handy on a tripod it keeps me from being stuck in weird positions for too long.
Posted by Merle Cook on January 14, 2009 at 8:57 PM
Good color with the sky and the ducks in the fg lend a nice element. You might consider a crop down from the top and up some from the bottom to make a pano type shot from it. It would eliminate some of the blue in the upper left and the dark below the ducks. IMHO>
Posted by Tom Kennon on January 14, 2009 at 9:13 PM
Here is a re post with a little cropping and a little editing. The more I look at the pics from this morning the more I realize they are just a nice sunrise and there really isn't anything too special about them. So I will probably never do a thing with them, but here it is anyway.
Posted by Merle Cook on January 15, 2009 at 9:55 AM
Hey Matthew - The crop helps the shot. Don't give up on the shots. Let them sit for awhile and then re-visit them and you will see other possibilities and different ways to present them. I've gone back over shots from several years ago and see things in them that I didn't see before. As the eye and brain gain experience from your own shots and viewing the work of others, you will change how you see your own shots. My wife is my best muse because she will look at a shot and see something there that I have overlooked.
I try to pass this spot on my way to work every morning at that magic minute. So I tend to get a lot of pictures with great color but lacking impact a lot of the time. Merle you are right, a significant other can really help with images. Especially in my case where mine knows absolutely nothing about photography. She doesn't understand f stops and iso's she just judges images solely on whether they look good or not.
Posted by Merle Cook on January 15, 2009 at 11:15 PM
Matthew, Hang on to her - my wife does counted cross stitch - which is an obsession unto itself. She deals with absolute counts and stitches in her hobby. When she looks at my shots she is able to see something that is in a vision of lights and darks, colors and shades. We all see something different in each subject. It is just being able to pull it all together into something that resembles what we want to convey in our art.
IMHO
Posted by Randy Wilson on January 18, 2009 at 8:44 PM
What's all this about "just a nice sunrise"? A nice sunrise is an amazing spectacle, and no one needs to beat himself up about taking a picture of one. I would have been very happy to have caught this image and have gone to a great deal of trouble many times to get far less.
One other thing you might look into is that you might check whether the horizon line is level. It looks like it may not be, but that may be just a trick of the eye.
Discussion
9 replieshttp://farm4.static.flickr.com/3508/3198085598_8d9d426dd5_o.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3334/3198510038_0d8e4eb497_o.jpg
IMHO
IMHO
One other thing you might look into is that you might check whether the horizon line is level. It looks like it may not be, but that may be just a trick of the eye.