Some quick images from Donna Nook last weekend:

Thanks Jack.

BUT I've just flipped it horizontally, and it looks much stronger, with better lead in, and the house looks less out of place.

George

No need to be softly softly, I am a member of a camera club so I am well used to, and grateful for, critique.

Colour uncropped original as requested - rather flat and dull as you can see.

Spot the number of faults - crooked horizon even though on tripod vignetting caused by ND or polarising filter at 12mm

I think I will do whatever Jack has done to the larger post (when I find out what he did!) as I think it adds impact.

Thanks for all the comments.

Jack - I would be interested in exactly what you did, as you seem to have bought out more detail in the wood.

George - The full size image is a lot wider and taller, and I may re-crop.

Dr Mhuni - I see what you mean about the land abruptly stopping. The light on the day was rather flat on the day, and all I did in the sky was bring in a 2nd darker RAW exposure for the sky into PS, and then spent 1 hour hiding the join as I got a bit of a bright line where the 2 exposures joined, and then emphasised the sky in the mono conversion.
I agree that in colour it would bt over the top.
Also prints always look a bit flatter than digital images.

Davex - I may do some 'false' depth of field to blur the background a bit, I shall see what I think.

The house - well I may have to flip a coin

My images always do better in competitions after having been on this forum, its a great weay of learning.

It was a very windy day - as it usually is in Wales - and the water was very choppy. I used an ND filter to get a long shutter speed, which flattens the water like magic.

Gareth - thanks for your comments, I also took on board your comments on my last portrait and it improved it significantly.

Dave - not been sharpened, but it will probably look less sharp when printed.

1-1 for and against the house

Hi All, I'm looking for comments and ways to improve this image.
e.g. would you clone out the house on the hillside? and what about general tone.
I will be cleaning up all the light pebbles on the beach
This will be printed for an open camera club competition.
Thanks in advance.

I don't know what people are complaining about with the noise on the K10D and K20D, in RAW it's comparable with or better than the Nikon D300 and Canon 50D.

You can read this in the review on DPReview on the D300s, and I also have practical real life experience as the 2 photographers I take most of my pictures with have those 2 precise cameras, and their images usually have more noise. (I do expose to the right though).

With JPEG's its a different matter as Canon and Nikon apply more noise reduction in-camera, and so their images will appear to be less noisy (and less sharp).

Shooting up to 1600 in RAW and using something like Nik Dfine works fine for me, and produces prints without any perceptible noise at A3 size.

My PC (Mac actually)has far more horsepower and better software for reducing noise, than relying on the less powerful software and hardware in my camera and the small amount of time is has to do noise reduction.

I just keep taking lots of pictures with whatever I have available, and will worry about the next model is when it comes out.