Early Morning Color - A River Cove

[JimC]

Taken from the banks of the Ogeechee River

[julies517]

beautiful morning light, nice composition, great reflection detail- super!

[airedaleman]

Lovely reflections JimC. Looks like a very tranquil and beautiful spot.

[In search of Syd]

Inspiring. That nice blue sky and those natural olive tones really make this image work.

[JimC]

I go to this location from time to time early on a Sunday morning with my brother-in-law. We usually get there around sunrise and stay for two or three hours.

He fishes, I take pictures. ;-)

It never seems to look the same (water levels, foilage colors, etc.). That one was taken at 8:12AM on a Sunday morning in November 2005.

It caught my eye when I was browing through some photos this afternoon. So, I decided to crop it to the aspect ratio for an 8x10" print, downsize it and post it here to see what others thought.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Aumma45]

Hey, Jim, have been on the forum for a couple of months. Have seen you post in many other places but not on the critique and technique forum. Welcome! :G. That shot is a real piece of art. Like Julie said just super! . Regards. Jaki.

[JimC]

I don't post here very often because my of my photos are not really keepers from my perspective. ;-)

This one was taken with a Konica Minolta Maxxum 5D using a Minolta 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5 at 28mm, f/11, ISO 400, 1/100 second. Av Mode, default matrix metering with -0.3 EV Exposure Compensation.

That's a straight from the camera jpeg except for cropping and downsizing. I decided that I liked the color, contrast and saturation the way the camera produced it for this one. Sharpening, Contrast, and Saturation were all set to +1 via camera settings.

Usually, I dial back the contrast a bit to try and retain the most highlight and shadow detail in the jpeg (and shoot raw + jpeg for best results convertijng the raw file in PP, too). But, I was playing with the camera settings and decided that this one came out OK without any PP when bumping up the default camera settings some.

I almost didn't notice it at all (it caught my eye when browing through some photos yesterday that I had taken when down at the Ogeechee River in November)

So, I wanted to get some other opinions, too.

In hindsight, I think the distant foilage/water may have been a bit sharper if I used a larger aperture and faster shutter speed with it at the expense of a little DOF (but, those foreground leaves in focus, especially in the reflections, are interesting to me and add to the image). 1/100 second isn't very fast with wind blowing foilage and the river running. I don't remember where I focused for it.

So, I'd need to try it several ways to see if a faster shutter speed would have been a better way to go. Too late now (the river always seems to look different).

But, it works OK for me (and I could still sharpen it via USM if needed). I took quite a few that morning with several different lenses, and this one is the only one that really stood out as being framable to me.

Thanks for comments.

[alex james]

hi jim/ this reallyis a nice shot, the only thing i would have tried to do is saturate the trees or bushes behind.

Alex

[Geminichild]

Oh Im counting the days for that weather where it looks warm so I can go Fishing already!

[SteveDak]

I think its all been said Jim - really nice reflections.