Alone at the Lake

After the storm

Gorgeous light and reflections here. The light on the distatn hills is lovely, the reflections in the water mesmerizing, so nuanced and complex. Interesting, at this distance the boat looks almost like a toy. I'd be tempted to crop the top part of the sky, to shift the horizon away from the center. Also -- don't know whether it's just the jpeg compression or what -- on my monitor this image is not quite sharp enough.

Yes there is a little too much sky. Now I know what bothered me about the comp. Thanks, this version is better I think. Yes the jpg compression really did a number on the sharpness. It seems like the portrait view of shots get distorted. I guess you have to make them smaller.

Jeri, do you sharpen before or after resizing? If you resize first and only then sharpen, you may get better results.

Thanks Chris, I will try just sharpening after resize. Regards: Jeri

Really nice shot. It does look like a toy boat - was this a composite? Whatever it is, it adds a nice kind of surrealism and I think it works well. The original crop works fine for me, but if you were to crop some sky, I think I would want the center fluffy cloud kept intact (slightly looser crop than your post). The original post has some circular structure in the water at R that has been removed in your crop - think I like it better removed. I don't find any sharpness problem in the posted version (maybe you've changed it?) - I think the "feel" of the photo works nicely, perhaps with some noise reduction or blur in the foreground water? If anything, I find the mountains behind a little oversharp. I do prefer the sharpness of the posted version to the crop. Nice work.

Julie: This was a small sailboat and I was elevated. The combination of the zoom lens and the breeze on the water made for an unusual shot. I scanned this from a negative and had to play around to get some artistic effect. I put it through noise ninja. I agree the mountains came out a little too sharp for the distance away from the boat but it does have a surreal feeling. I think you are right about the crop. The top of the cloud is a nice curve that I should have left in. I had fun with this using some artistic license. Thanks for stopping by. Regards Jeri