Went to a new lake and there was no wind and smooth water.
Adjusted contrast, saturation and exposure in RawSooter.
In PS I adjusted levels on the Pelican to give it more contrast and darker. Adjusted the rest with levels and selective colour. Cloned out some weeds and a pole in the water with the patch tool. Used Noise median filter set to 3 on all but the pelican and the trees. Cropped.
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Place: 52 out of 329 Avg (all users): 6.1393 Avg (commenters): 6.5385 Avg (participants): 6.0286 Avg (non-participants): 6.2604 Views since voting: 1158 Views during voting: 293 Votes: 201 Comments: 16 Favorites: 1 (view)
I gave this an 8. Very serene and 'reflective' (no pun intended). Nice simplicity. Toning may have added something extra for this Challenge, who knows - but the color works well, 'naturally'.
Very nice capture. I think your handling of the natural light is good and the focus looks great to me. Colors look a little flat, not sure if a bump in saturation would help or lead to unnatural looking effects. I like the composition for the most part but I'd prefer to have it cropped just under the line of trees on the horizon and leave the pelican to look as if it is swiming/floating through clouds. A bit more serene/surreal and the illusion would add another dimension to the image IMO. I gave a 6.
I think a super tight crop to about 30% of what you have here would be good. Just the bird, so it looks like he's floating on the clouds. Nice capture with the reflection. Unfortunately, the rest of the frame is just a distraction.
This is very nice. Usually, I find something with so much background to be a bit distracting to the eye, making the eye search the photo for all of the interesting detail. However, I think that the distance of the treeline, and the softness in the clouds being reflected do not harm the overall sense of quietness in this photo, as they might in other photos of this type. Great job from the 'Great Job Baggie'!
All is surely calm. A dash of ripples actually makes to see the stillness in contrast. Very well executed and the size of subject is just in line Zen paintings. I feel there was no need to horizon on this photo. Simple reflects in water would also have just worked fine (or maybe even better IMO.) Goodluck.8.
Meets the challenge very well. In the sense that the bird is offset, the composition is well done. On the other hand, the shoreline does nothing but detract from the overall sense of serenity here. Cropped so that this is just the bird on the water with that wonderful reflection, I would have ranked this an 8. With the shoreline destroying my sense of calm and the washed out sky above just taking up space, I'm going to give a 5. Nice work.
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