Nice mallard jim. Good sharp image. You have some nice interesting waves and swirls in the foreground, i think i would crop a little of the background out to get away from the central composition and make the duck a larger part of the frame.
Thanks,Steve.I'm really bad at composition.Something I need to start concentrating on more.I like the second crop.What do you think,more off the top?
Much better jim. I usually just play around with different crop sizes and back and forth between the rule of thirds and golden sections , untill i find something i like.
I also use my in-camera focus dots to help line things up close to the rule of thirds in camera. I try and leave a little extra room for cropping, but the original photo is close to the composition i want. Other times you just have to take a quick center focus and leave room to crop a composition later.
Steve and Donald,
Thanks for the critique and help.