"The Delta"

[Ben]

I was thinking maybe a little more seperation between the horizon and the light.

[connealy]

I like the bit of humor in the first shot with the gull watching the passing parade.  

The strong point of the second shot is the nice texture and tonality of the water.  The unusual shape of the structure on the left is a little mysterious.

The last shot has some good graphic quality, but it seems a bit too enigmatic without some explanation of the function of the foreground object.

Looks like a terrific place for an extended project/photo essay.  Hope you will show what develops here if you go that way.

[pandino]

Ben,
I really like that second shot.  What I would suggest to make it even better:

- During composition; more water, less sky
- During printing; crop sky a bit, dodge the peninsula on the left, burn the water lower right

[Ben]

Mike you bring up a good point about the light.  While its a common sight in these parts (a navigation aid) in other parts of the world its completely foreign looking.  I was planning to re-visit that spot again to try a different approach too.

Pandino, I was thinking the same thing.  I actually cropped quite a bit of sky from the original image.  So my original composition was, I thought, way off.  
What caught my eye when I composed the photo, was the structure/memorial on the shore that looked so much like the sailboat.
I thought it brought an interesting balance to the photo.
I'm going to do more windy day shooting, which gives the shallow water on the Delta a lot of interesting texture.  

Mike, Pandino, thanks for the comments.

more to come........

[David Bedell]

I will suggest the opposite of Mr. pandino.

For the second shot, an alternative composition might be to include virtually all sky, with the water and sailboat at the very bottom of a square frame.  The overall effect of some small vertical elements in the bottom corners, plus the horizontal line of the water -- but otherwise an empty expanse of grayness -- would be interesting.