pdoyle

Good control of DOF, imaginative photo, pleasing warm color.

This is just an extraordinary picture. Many thanks for posting it.

Funny how the title can add so much to my appreciation of a photo in certain cases. Very nice shot. I'd like a bit more breathing room around the subject, especially on the left.

It looks like a fair amount of "noise" has been introduced into your JPEG, either by the camera or in post-processing; it's especially visible in the sky. You've done a good job of emphasizing the loneliness of this tree, and you did the "right thing" by putting both the horizon and the tree off-center; however, I find that this kind of shot only works (for my taste) when there is something interesting in the sky (cool clouds, etc.) or in the foreground. In this case, I think the blank, strangely purple sky and the rather desolate foreground is hurting the realization of your idea.

You've captured the grace of a bird that doesn't look like it should be graceful in flight, with those long legs. Wonderful composition and contrasting tones.

Very nice capture. Did you stop down the lens a bit? There seems to be more DOF than I usually see on these types of shots (that's a plus, by the way).

Nice lighting, colors, composition. Just wish it were a bit larger!

This is a neat piece of architecture, but aside from the water smears on the lens I think you've got a challenge capturing a light-toned building against a bright white/gray sky. Especially with the dark shadowed areas at lower right, it's going to be hard to capture sufficient detail in both the light and dark areas - and in this case, you seem to have gotten the detail at lower right at the cost of losing whatever detail there was in the sky. In this case I'd either try to minimize the amount of bright sky in the frame, wait for a darker sky to contrast the light stone against, or meter for less exposure overall.

Maybe this is what Lewis Carroll was thinking of when he wrote about the Cheshire Cat?!? This is really cool.

The curvy lines certainly take me into the photo, although they keep me over on the left side more than I'd like. The matching blue tones of the clouds and ground-level scenery are nice. Wish I could see some detail on the tall structure in the upper center - it's hard to tell what it is. Nice photo!

Please rate/comment - thanks.

There are lots of bird shots with vertical mirror symmetry (thanks to water), but few with horizontal (almost) mirror symmetry! Nice job spotting the opportunity and capturing the shot very nicely.

Comments and suggestions are welcome!

Very sharp, nice capture. I like the bit of nest-building material in his beak, it gives a snippet of a story to this photo. I guess the shot might be improved if the other vertical branch weren't in the background, but I don't suppose you had a long time to walk around and find a different angle to get this little guy.

I really like this one. Did you have to lower the overall brightness to get the water to turn that inky black?

Nice feeling to this - you managed the light areas well without letting them get washed out.