Taken in South Bohemia (Czech republic). This is the largest pond in my country - Rozmberk.

-- Stanislav Kaczor (stanislav.kaczor@kabelplus.cz), July 22, 1998

Answers

Beautiful, beautiful photograph. I have no constructive criticism to offer, just congratulations on a job done well. I'd love to see an original print of this. If you're ever in California bring one with you.

-- Darron Spohn (sspohn@concentric.net), July 22, 1998.

Yup, absolutely gorgeous. The golden light is great. If anything (and this is being really picky) I'd like to see the sun be the same distance from the top edge as the reflection is from the bottom edge. Because you've got so many vertical lines, it can't hurt to stretch them out by making the composition a bit taller. But like I said, that's being really picky.

-- Steve Leroux (steve@bigadventures.com), July 22, 1998.

I wonder what this picture would look like if the tall grass in the foreground were illuminated by fill flash rather than forming black lines that merge with the background land on the opposite shore of the sea...

-- (andreas@physio.unr.edu), July 22, 1998.

Wonderful. The only improvement might be to eliminate the narrow silver of highlight on the water in the distance. Then the eye is drawn more to the highlights on the grass. Also try decreasing the brightness to improve the saturation. I turned down the brightness on my monitour reducing the number of brightness steps from 20 to 18 (using the scale posted by Keith in his "Driftwood" post) and this improved the saturation. The colours turned very golden.

-- Paul Lenson (lenson@pci.on.ca), July 23, 1998.

This is indeed a beautiful shot. I agree that the small piece of reflection in the middle is a bit of a distraction. I like the backlit tall grass as the way it is; the use of fill flash would have destroyed the mood in my opinion.

-- Shun Cheung (shun@worldnet.att.net), July 23, 1998.

Thanks a lot for all comments.
The reflection in the middle is not so distracting on the original print because of more details ... but maybe it would be better without it.
I have the earlier scan with mentioned decreasing brightness here. Some people said it was too dark, so I rescanned it from better print. I must say I prefer the latest scan.
Like Steve I'd like to see a little bit more space on the top, but there is no more space on the film ...

-- Stanislav Kaczor (stanislav.kaczor@kabelplus.cz), July 29, 1998.