Elterwater Dawn

#1 by a large margin for me. I very much like its simplicity and peace whereas the more defined clouds (or colour) in the other shots detract from that.

#4 - as others have commented, it is the glow of the sun on the distant hills (and in their reflections) that makes that the one for me.

Cheers.
Philip

Thanks for the thoughts - very much appreciated

Fair point!

No direct (intentional) lightening of the water, but this effect might have come from general processing, plus I used a 3 stop ND grad in the field on the sky and this might have been overly aggressive for the conditions. I am something of a noob with regards to field use of filters.

I'll have another look at this. I don't think lightening the sky is the answer as it will lose definition.. so I might experiment with darkening (relatively) parts of the water, if you follow me. Have to try to get the balance right

Just been back and checked the out-of-camera... and over-enthusiastic use of a field ND grad for the sky IS the problem . Need to learn how to apply them more effectively.

Sorry to have not commented so far Tim! I will add my vote for the last image, to me it has more drama and interest with the warmth of the first rays lighting up the distance.

Regards
David

As the main symmetry is defined by the trees on the right I would crop some of the bottom of all of them in the first instance.


I can see why most have chosen the colour balance of #4, but I'm not so sure. I like #4 but the colder balance of #1 somehow suits this scene better.

Quite right, it is an Americanism, which is why I won't use it.

I was curious walkeja and the # symbol goes back a very long way. It seems likely that it originates in the 5 bit Baudot code designed for early telecommunications, in which case I'm afraid you'd have to blame the French.

Quite right too John. It'd be a shame to limit xenophobia just to the yanks

It's funny, you maybe right, but you only see it in the USA.

Just done a Google search of the Baudot Code and have found that the # was added by, well you can guess, I was right, it is American. Sorry chaps you are wrong.

You see it here as well as everywhere else in the world, on every keyboard in existence and every telephone keypad.

In the UK we call it "hash", but in any event I'm not sure what your objection is, but we shouldn't detour from the thread any further anyway.

It's also the symbol for pounds weight and was used a lot in engineering prior to going metric. The Americans call it the pound sign.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pound+sign

--

"The story of the hashtag begins sometime around the fourteenth century, with the introduction of the Latin abbreviation “lb,” for the Roman term libra pondo, or “pound weight.” Like many standard abbreviations of that period, “lb” was written with the addition of a horizontal bar, known as a tittle, or tilde. And though printers commonly cast this barred abbreviation as a single character, it was the rushed pens of scribes that eventually produced the symbol’s modern form: hurriedly dashed off again and again, the barred “lb” mutated into the abstract #. The symbol shown here on the left, a barred “lb” rendered in Isaac Newton’s elegant scrawl, is a missing link, a now-extinct ancestor of the # that bridges the gap between the symbol’s Latin origins and its familiar modern form. Though it is now referred to by a number of different names—“hash mark,” “number sign,” and even “octothorpe,” a jokey appellation coined by engineers working on the Touch-Tone telephone keypad—the phrase “pound sign” can be traced to the symbol’s ancient origins. For just as “lb” came from libra, so the word “pound” is descended from pondo, making the # a descendent of the Roman term libra pondo in both name and appearance."

from “Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks,” by Keith Houston

There, it's Latin which means that we can all hate the Romans. After all what have the Romans ever done for us?

Can we talk about the photos now?