Two Ducks

Two duck against a dogwood in Golden Gate Park. Critiques will be

greatly apreciated.

My sense here is that you'd set up to photograph the dogwood's reflection and the ducks came into the frame. It's good photographic instinct to go for a grab shot when these sorts of things happen (particularly with digital, since there's really nothing to lose) and the result here is an interesting and attractive photograph. It falls for me in that the subject is pretty clearly the dogwood's reflection and thus the ducks are more a major distraction than a compelling addition to the photo. I'm not sure if it would be better or worse if the ducks were really in the depth of field in their present location, but there's potentially a great photograph here if you'd waited for the ducks to come farther forward (and the ducks had cooperated). My guess is that they weren't moving fast enough for much of the dogwood reflection to have been preserved, but one never knows.

I think T-West pretty much nailed it. Those colors really grabbed me though. Maybe if you tried using a "real" camera instead of those new fangled toys you'd get better feedback. Kidding! I'm using the same camera myself. Out of curiosity are you doing your post processing on a mac or pc?

Todd was pretty close. I came to shoot ducks, but the reflection mesmerized me, and I had to get it. The ducks were moving slowly, but creating a wake, and would have ruined the tree reflection. I wanted them in the picture, and waited until they were in the upper-right "hot-spot."

 

I'm doing my post-processing on an IBM Thinkpad in Photoshop 6.

Todd said it all. Maybe the picture would be better is the focus was on the ducks (supposing they weren't in the corner so much). Then, the out of focus reflection would (hopefully) have an abstract feel.

 

Despite the criticism of the above posts (which were constructive), this is one of your strongest photos. Very nice reflection. And I agree, more or less needs to be done with the ducks.