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Gordon Craig
06-17-2008, 10:18 AM
I recently took this picture early one morning in Milford Michigan as the sun was coming up. When I looked at the group of lily pads, all I could think of wow. I took the picture pretty quick because light can change very rapidly in the early morning; I was using a Canon 5D with a 70 - 300 mm with image stabalizer. The shot was done at 210mm, F 4.5 and 1/180sec exposure. The ISO was 100.

Roman Kurywczak
06-17-2008, 07:15 PM
Hi Gordon,
I like the simplicity of the presentation but overall the pads seem to be a bit busy. Concentrating on a smaller portion with the lens may have given you a beter comp and give a stronger center of interest. It looks like you are also getting a little vignetting from possibly the lens shade...................but in this instance..........I kind of like it as it darkened the edges.....but you may want to keep that in mind for future images. Keep working the spot and welcome to the forums!

Robert Amoruso
06-18-2008, 03:17 PM
Gordon,

I like the idea here a lot as they just seem to float in a sea of blue - also looks like the sky.

I downloaded the image and tried a few things.

1) Clone the pads out that were cut off by the edge of the left frame (I was not too precise so you can see it).
2) Removed the vignetting (still a bit there).
3) Did a levels adjustment in PS and brightened the image.
4) Did a curves adjustment to a selection on the water only to darked it - pulled curve down from the mid-tone.
5) Cropped as shown to get the pads out of the center.

I do like the centering of the pads as it makes for a tranquail feeling. However, that is also a bit static. In the end depends upon wuat you might want to make the viewer feel. Looks like you have a lot of image dust so I suspect your sensor needs cleaning.

Nice work on this image - it has great feeling.