Ducks & Ripples in Colored Water

[Dave Taylor]

This is an image in a series that I concentrated on while in Homer this past weekend. It is a series of silhouettes. As I mentioned in the first thread - the color (unaltered by the way:)), was caused by ash in the air from recent Mt. Redoubt eruptions & activity. The days were hazy, but the moonrises & sunrises were pretty amazing. An amazing morning all around. Again, the sRGB files on the web don't do the colors justice - the real file is much nicer.
http://sixtyonenorth.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/_mg_49951.jpg
Canon 50D
600 mm IS + 1.4 teleconverter
ISO 500
f8
1/1000"

Comments and critiques very welcome.
Cheers everyone.

[Jasper Doest]

Nice scene....but I think you could have made much more from this when talking about composition. I'd have placed the birds in the lower right corner...leaving loads of empty space on the top left. Which would make things more interesting imo. And if you wanted to play safe, you could also placed them in the lower left, but I think the lower right would be better.

[Steve Maxson]

The colors are pretty amazing, Dave and you captured a nice interaction between the birds. I would agree with Jasper about changing the placement of the birds in the frame. The birds look like red-necked grebes to me - not ducks. :)

[Dave Taylor]

Thanks to you both - I totally agree. Somehow, even though I realized they were grebes, I wrote ducks:) Rookie mistake, you hate to see it happen:)

Thanks for taking the time to comment & critique - very much appreciated!
I think that, since this image is more about color and form (and less about fine detail) it doesn't suffer much from a crop to move the birds off center. What do you think of this "new comp"?

http://sixtyonenorth.com/IMAGES/_MG_4995.jpg

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Your repost looks fine now.

Very nice interaction captured here. The colors are very moody.
Your sensor needs to be cleaned.

[Dave Taylor]

Thanks Juan.
I was just thinking the same thing - time to get the sensor swabs out:) The thing that still bugs me, is that the sRGB conversion is still really hampering the colors - you should see this in ProPhoto RGB.