Most with the 100-400, two with 55-250
Got a few ones I am proud of..Let me know how I did please!
First of all, I'm going to critique these against my standards, if you're proud of them, first and foremost be happy with that.
There is no detail at all in the sky- and the horizon is dead center in the image. Personally, I probably would have shot much lower down and gotten rid of the sky. Clear skies are great for birds in flight, but the death of many a landscape image unless you have a really good negative space composition going on. Worse-yet, the sky is blown out a bit, so it's not even a nice refreshing blue color. You might also have tried shooting just the reflection with the far shore at the top of the frame, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but when it does, it's good.
Tree trunks are blown out, but there's nothing interesting around the highlights, and the obvious line of the shore just leads our eye out of the image. Exposure-wise I'd suggest chimping the histogram when you shoot. A bit too much clutter on the left, the grass in the foreground is a great idea, but the mess at the shoreline behind it kills it for me. I'd think the central tree as a subject without the clutter would have worked a bit better.
Trunks are way over-exposed losing detail that may have brought interest to the scene. I'm wondering if losing the top ~15% and starting lower would have helped the composition as well. This has potential if you can recover the highlight detail.
The blown out leaves kill this, as does the lack of an interesting subject. The eye is generally drawn to the brightest spot in an image, and here there's no detail, no lines, and no real space to define anything of interest. I'm guessing the bright patch of sun drew your eyes to this, but it really takes a scene were the eye can be drawn in a circle around a bright spot for an image like this to work well. The branch near the center and the grasses also throw this off enough that had you been able to capture what you saw in this, it'd still be spoiled.
An interesting tree, but again higlights blown-- if you can return nearer sunrise or sunset, it'd be worth it. Horizon tilts badly- consider a bubble level or straightening in post if you can. I'd probably shoot wider and put the trunk over to the right. Gator's too small to affect the entire image, but if the image were more balanced and better-exposed it'd be a bonus for sure.
I'd go right with the main subject here too- to get it out of the center and to lose the bright white partial trunk on the right. The water at the bottom doesn't bring lots of interest, so I'd probably shoot higher here, or zoom in more to get more root details into the frame. Once again the bark's blown, and I think that's a shame. At least the sky isn't completely blown like the first two, and you can see the difference it makes overall if you compare the shots that have some color to those which don't.
I'd recommend that you shoot earlier or later when the brightness range is lower, bracket some shots- worst-case a slight HDR would help most of these, and try zooming in on some details- the roots especially in this series could have given some visually interesting subjects in isolation.
There's lots of potential here.
Paul
