New to photography... critiques, please.

I've seen some awesome photos on this site. I'm almost embarrassed to post.
However, I need to learn ways to improve!

This is a shot from an Alaskan Sunrise...

Please critique...

Welcome to the forum!! Your photo is not bad, nothing to feel embarrassed about! I think the color in this image is lovely. A very soft and comforting feel is given from the color. The biggest problem I see is that you do not seem to have focused on your pieces subject... you seem to be focused on the water near you and not the mountain range in the distance.

Thanks David!

I appreciate the feedback. I struggle with focus on many of my landscapes.
I'm not sure if it's due to depth of field or something else. But I do believe when I took this photo I had select the manual focus point and focused on the mountains.

Only other thing I can think of was the cruise ship was moving quite a bit... could that have caused the blur?

Any suggestions for a newbie?

Thanks,
Bill

Hey Bill,

That definately could be an issue... I always try to shoot with a tripod to get the sharpest image possible. However, when you are moving like that it is good to adjust your settings to get a shorter shutter speed, by either opening up your aperature or increasing your ISO... not saying thats always good to do though (but its better than not having the shot?).

I will say that focusing is really hard unless you have great eye sight... when it comes to a scene like this. If you have Live View, use it! I remember with my 30D having photos slightly OOF that I thought were sharp, but now that I have Live View on my new camera it never happens unless I caused the camera to shake somehow.

My biggest suggestion is just to read and then re-read your camera's manual. I think I shot for about 3 years with my 30D before I actually read it... and my photography improved exponentially after that! Besides that... just keep practicing, you seem to have a good eye so keep it up !

To answer your question, being on a ship can cause blur. But, if it were motion blur you would see the same effect on the waves close to you. It's more likely a depth of field problem since a sunrise might have caused you to open up the aperture.

Cruise ship shots are a challenge since it's hard to get a lot of feeling of depth without something in the foreground. I would jack the contrast up a tad, and burn in the dark streaks on the water caused by wind gusts. The idea is to get the viewer to follow the lighter portions of the sea toward the mountains, and at the same time increasing the feeling of depth. I would dodge the snow patches some to provide a little more interest to them. I would try adding a bit of structure to the dark clouds and see if cropping some off of the top would be of benefit (maybe not).

Overall, it's a beautiful shot of the sunrise.

Thank you both for the feedback! I greatly appreciate the suggestions!