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Nikon D70 ,Nikkor 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6G ED-IF AF-S VR
1/250s f/8.0 at 120.0mm ISO 200 hand held

Most sunset shots are dull, dull, dull but yours is very appealing. It has all the elements that make a great picture:

- framing (the trees)
- foreground and background interest (water and bridge)
- colour (great red - postprocessed?)
- movement (the birds)

All in all a fantastic 9/10 shot.

Well done

Kerry, I think the problem with this shot is the blurred tree branches on the foreground, particularly on the right. I find them very distracting, and they have the effect of making the shot feel out of focus or otherwise not sharp.

The bridge and the chimneys and the smoke are all great with the low sun, and the birds are well caught. But the trees take too much away.

Just my opinion, others may take a different view.

One of the best I've seen.

Well done Kerry. WOW !

Very nice indeed.

Mic.

I think it's a great landscape (and much better than all the dog photos )...

Nice composition, and as for the blurring in the front, I don't mind it... Just think of it as frontal boke

Thanks all, for the kind comments and critiques!

I tend to agree with Greg about the OOF branches, but there was nothing to be done about it. I couldn't use hyperfocal focus. The trees were only about 40 to 50ft from my shooting position. Hyperfocal focus for 120mm at the minimum aperture of f/22 only gives me 62ft as the near sharpness limit. Focus on the trees would have only given me 20ft of DOF, throwning the birds and bridge OOF.

So, what I did was focus on the large piece of ice, above and right of the birds. That gave me huge DOF to work with, even at f/8. While nothing in the shot is razor sharp, as a result of that, the shutter speed and f/stop allowed me to get "acceptable" sharpness ( less motion blur on the birds ) as a tradeoff for the things in the shot I deemed more important.

Leek wants to see more photos from the dog show? I thought y'all would be tired of those by now....

Kerry, I agree with Greg, maybe this sort of crop would help.

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Thanks for the crop suggestion, Phillip. That does remove some of the worst OOF trees.

Nope, Still like the first. adds to the shot I feel.

Woof Woof

Mic.