Two for C&C - Great Falls National Park

I'm pretty new to this stuff, but here are two of my recent photos for C&C. The first one is an in-camera HDR (my first ever, and it probably shows) and I know it looks way over baked, but it's growing on me. Tell me if it's just because it's mine, or if it legitimately sucks. The second one I just used a slow shutter speed on (~2"). Please, feel free to hit me with both barrels.

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Thanks for taking the time to look at these, and hopefully telling me how I can improve them.

-Dan

 

I think the first is just slightly overdone. I love the heron in the second.

Beautiful scenes nonetheless. : )

 

Wow, the photos looks very nice. Did the bird stay still for the 2 seconds exposure? lol

 

There are actually two birds, and out of about 5 similar exposures, this was the only one where the birds didn't have some kind of blur on them. The more I think about this one though, I very well could have used a faster shutter speed. I remember messing with the apeture trying to get the shutter speed up, and the highest I could go at one point was between 0.6" and 1" depending on where I was aiming. Eventually I got to 2", but this may have been taken before that. I know this information is contained within the file somewhere, but it'll take me some messing around to figure it out.

Thanks for the comments so far. Please keep them coming.

 

I think the colors were lost... kind of looks bland, or over exposed. But the silky Fx to the water came out nicely.. and aside from the color, IMHO, they came out very nice! Good Job!

 

Connada
I know how hard it can be to properly expose these shots, with the white water and dark rocks.

I really like the second photo, it captures my attention and the birds are icing on the cake.

 

Thanks tirediron, I appreciate the input. I'd love to do the HDR myself, hopefully I'll get the software in the next couple months. Until then, I'm pretty limited, but I guess I could take the necessary exposures now and then do the HDR once I get the software. I'm headed to HI next week, and plan to take a ton of photos. I also agree that a filter would have been a better choice, soon enough I'll have a bunch of gear...

I never even thought about white balance while I was out there. My camera is probably just on auto right now. I probably need a checklist to remember everything. I think you're also right regarding a different crop, getting rid of a lot of that extra water at the bottom. It's so hard seeing this stuff in your own work, but pretty apparent right after someone says something about it.

 

I like them, the second in particular.
:thumbup:

 

I second liking the second picture.

 

1) overexposure...
2) awesome capture. very dreamy!

 

Agreed. Crop the right side just enough to get rid of that small dark spot.

Good shot.