Dawn On Trap Pond C&C Welcome

[AndrewMcD]

Trap Pond near Laurel, Delaware is the northernmost occurrence of the Bald Cypress. Though it rained on us most of the weekend it cleared for about two hours around dawn on Sunday morning.

[Marie Hass]

Dear Andrew,

I loved the tones of this image! What a great perspective! It appears as though you are the one out in the water looking in at the land. Do you have any idea what created the 2 horizontal lines in the foreground?

Marie

[NorthernFocus]

Cypress is one of my favorite trees. There is such a quiet serenity being deep in a cypress swamp. Until the mosquitoes show up. I had no idea that they grew naturally so far north.

This is a lovely image. It definitely gives the sense of a soft, damp morning. Compositionally IMO a good bit of the water should be cropped away to focus more attention on the trees' knees and to eliminate what appears to be the remnants of a boat wake. The reflections of the trunks don't add anything. Again that's IMO. Overall nicely done.

[Rebel]

Lovely image, it is a bit of a shame about the boat marks though.

[IzzieK]

Nicely done, Andrew....might have to crop to the boat marks though...

[John 2]

Intriguing image of something we don't generally see in the UK. Love the rendition but I agree with the crop suggested by Dan.

[Shadowman]

Nice one.

[Stagecoach]

Nicely captured Andrew.

[Mike Buckley]

Wonderful muted tones. If it was mine, I would probably crop to eliminate the sky and I would digitally remove the remnants of the boat wake.

[JohnRostron]

I agree that this is a most impressive picture. I do think that the foreground with the reflection of the tree trunks is an integral part of the picture. I am intrigued by the horizontal lines. They look far too parallel to be the wake of a boat. Looking closely at the full-sized image, there appears to be dark vertical lines in the water (especially at the right-hand side), almost like reflections of non-existent trees.

John

[NorthernFocus]

... I am intrigued by the horizontal lines. They look far too parallel to be the wake of a boat...

On the contrary, they look far too parallel to be anything occurring in nature. But look exactly like the foam that remains on the water in a boat wake long after the waves have subsided.

[Downrigger]

This is beautiful, all right, and is the picture I would have expected myself to try for had I been there. But the critique here is great, and I think Mike's comments are right on. On the other hand, there was the poet who was asked if his poem was meant to have a meaning the questioner suggested, and said, "if that's what I wanted to say, that's what I would have written".

[Brownbear]

Beautiful image... Boat marks, yes, but I couldn't bear to crop the sky simply because the soft pink colours are so exquisite.

[AndrewMcD]

Thank you for all the interesting comments! The 'boat wakes' which have aroused the most commentary are not boat wakes at all. By my best determination they are light scattered and reflected by wind disturbing the surface of the pond. There were no boats on the pond the entire weekend. The image was shot at approximately 200mm focal length (I say approximately because I am not at a computer that has that information) with a 1.5 crop factor. The image has been significantly cropped from the original. Those factors plus the low light may all contribute to what some seem to think an unnatural occurrence. This may be just the opportunity to see how well the content aware cloning in Photoshop works as I'm a complete Photoshop novice. I also intend to try both the sky crop and the foreground crop to completely explore the possibilities of the image.
Thanks to all,
Andrew

[Wavelength]

Very nice

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Any chance we could see a full size image, ie uncropped?

Nice picture. Right place, right time, right equipment.