Swimming toward the Sunset

[JK6065]

Two photo's of my latest photosesion this afternoon.
The location was a lake surrounded by trees during sunset. There were two swans on the lake and it took forever until to went to the place with the nicest reflection .

1/25s F4.5 ISO 100 @18mm

Light was fading fast while I was stil searching for a nice photo of the swan. This is my best one of the swan. It might not look that special but it was quite a difficult shot. Motion blur was my greatest issue here. I had to go to the edge of my zoomlens (125mm) and shoot a moving swan with 1/6s. I set ISO to 400, which I think is one of the last values with acceptable noise levels with that amount of light.
I followed the swan in its motion to get acceptable sharpness and a bit of background'panning'

1/6s F5.6 ISO 400@125mm

What do you tink about it?
any comments/critiques?
They are very welcome.

Edit: 100 posts yah

[stevewe88]

I love the first shot, very nice. The swan still looks a bit blurred to me but under the conditions I would be pleased with it.

Congrats on the 100 posts!

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Jeroen,

I like the first shot, but it is a little spoilt for me by the two straight things in the centre left of frame - one on horizon amongst trees and a short one below it, in the water. These I think I would clone out as they are at odds with the natural-ness of everything else in the shot. Other than that, it's great.

Cheers,

[Lincs1]

I like the first shot a lot, not quite sure what is going on on LHS , just spoils a super sunset, a job for photoshop and patience.

Nigel

[JK6065]

Dave, does this looks like an improvement to you? (I think it is and you were right)
The top one was a snapped tree and the bottom one some kind of pole in the water (so not that unnatural but quite a distraction from the composition).

@Lincs1
What do you meen with LHS? I don't quite get what it should mean . Maybe the thing dave pointed out?

anyways,
Thanks for your C&C

[CNelson]

I really like both shots. The sunset with trees reflected is my favorite. Excellent work.

Now if you can just get the swan to swim into the first shot....

Chuck

[RichMurphy]

In regards to the swan image, as much as I dislike noise, I dislike blur maybe even more. Therefore, if I had time to think about the options out ahead of time, I would have gone with ISO 1600 to get the faster shutter speed then dealt with the noise later. With this scene, something is going to suffer. (Sell your car or one of your kids and get a camera with great high ISO performance.)

[JK6065]

I think it would be best to do as you said but Me images most of the time suffer under (in my opinion) muchr or maybe too much noise. And though I use Neatimage ps plugin I struggle with noise anyways.

As I'm one of the youngest members (17) I don't have a car yet and luckily no kids either so have to find something else to sell.

[Dave Humphries]

Dave, does this looks like an improvement to you? (I think it is and you were right)
The top one was a snapped tree and the bottom one some kind of pole in the water (so not that unnatural but quite a distraction from the composition).

@Lincs1
What do you meen with LHS? I don't quite get what it should mean . Maybe the thing dave pointed out?

Hi Jeroen,

Sorry, I missed this until I read your reply today

Yes, that's much better, you got them both

I think what Lincs1 is referring to is the foreground grasses at front left of frame being perhaps a little over-powering. I can see his point, but it doesn't bother me too much, I suppose you could crop one tree's worth off the left, but I'm not sure I'd go that far.

btw LHS = left hand side

Cheers,