Please critique composition and PP

[jwood1]

Hello. I'm a newbie to digital SLR- I just switched from 35mm film and got a Canon 30D. I'm having a lot of fun, and trying to learn Photoshop. I would love some critiques on my photos and my post-processing/cropping decisions. I will post some shots I took of a heron this morning, the first will be the unprocessed and the second will be processed as follows: 1. cropped, 2. darkness/brightness adjusted with histogram, 3. sharpness adjusted with unsharp mask. Shots were taken with 30D with EF 70-300 IS USM lens, ISO 100, shot in jpeg.

Please don't worry about hurting my feelings. I'm starting to get more serious about photography and want to elevate my pictures from snapshots to real photography.

This first one was shot at F8 and 1/1600

[jwood1]

I guess I can't attach additional photos in this thread? Am I missing something?

[tazrebel]

Hi jwood,
I too am just starting to post here. i really like your the composition of the second picture! towards the top of the photo in the water it looks like your starting to get some noise and blur. I too have the 30D and use Photoshop CS2; if i could give one piece of advice it would be, shoot the fun photos in jpeg but shoot your serious photos in RAW. You will be able to make more adjustments to your photo without degrading you image.

[crackerbee2]

I personally don't like the crop in the second photo. But, the color is much better in the second.

I think you can only attach two images, but can embed up to 8. I use www.photobucket.com (http://www.photobucket.com) and then embed my photos from there.

[jwood1]

The first one is the unprocessed full-frame, the second is a crop of the first after processing. So would you go with the full frame, or crop it differently?

Thanks

[strmrdr]

crop the other side.. one bird height out to the right of the bird.
2nd one the white balance looks off too blue first is a little gray.

Too many blown highlights to be a great picture but could be decent with some work.