This is one of those scenes that most of us would stop and snap, drawn by the play of light and shadow and the weird and wonderfull shapes and patterns, unfortunatly it wouldn't have worked for us either, the lighting is far too harsh and you have tried to include to much, too many shapes and patterns for the brain to take in at once makes the image a bit of a jumble, I'm sure you can do better than this if you look around the scene and try and isolate different parts.

For me the image would have been in the top right hand corner, the shadow of the fence leading the eye towards the trees.....with that van gone of course

See that stuff in Scotts feeders Jeanette? thats Niger seed, sometimes called Thistle seed, and Goldfinches love it, its not exactly cheap and you'll need a special feeder, but It will gaurantee the little buggers will be in your gearden within a few days of you putting it out the trick then is to get into a position you can snap them from.

I would be tempted to crop the boat out, I dont think it adds anything to the image, in fact its more of a distraction, I think the decision to convert to mono was the way to go, lovely tones on the cygnet, just a bit of detail lost in the lower half of the swans neck but given the subject I think the exposure is excelent. Good title too

If someone in a black ski mask mugs you it wont be me......I have my alibi planned

must go now, have to put Whipsnade zoo into my sat nav

Hang on a mo' Tel may well have moved over to Canon but that doesn't actually mean he's totally bananas

I have some old tungsten lighting, and believe me when I say it gets blooming warm, and not just in front of the lights, I keep telling myself I'll convert it to flash but it'd probably be cheaper to buy new

Bugger the leaf that rose looks more appealing

Martins comments are spot on, I hope you took notes

EDIT typo

Just think very carefully about what you want to shoot and buy the best quality lenses you can afford to do the job. Then you can always satisfy your LBA by watching out for rerasonably priced classic bargains on evil-bay.
PS; dont forget the remote control and the flashgun and the spare battery and the grip and the filters and the bean bag and the sensor cleaning kit and the lens pen and the charger for the flash batteries and the stone bag for the tripod and the LCD protector and the angle finder and the portable reflectors, and the studio lighting and the spare SD cards and the card reader and the flash bracket and the handstrap and the ever ready case and the sherpa to carry it all

Nice shot Aiki, I prefer the first one and Tonys suggested crop.

I was quite impressed with the K7 sample video, cant think what I'd use video for but I think I need a K7 now