Shelley O'Connell wrote:
> Hi Jim,
>
> I like this composition: the foreground ship draws me in, then the street with residential
> houses and what looks like a factory in the background. The sunset light is lovely.
> I am not sure whether this is your intention but it is not sharp enough for me. IMO (for
> what it's worth) Your photos have a softness to them which is puzzling as if they were post
> edited to look like paintings perhaps.
> Just to reiterate, very good composition.
>
> Regards,
> Shelley
>

Shelly,

First, thanks for the compliment! This was one of my favorite compositions also.

Second, sometimes I like to add a dreamy look to a lot of my photos, but this one I wanted to be sharp. It has become obvious with comments to other photos that I am having a problem with sharpness somewhere along the line.

My RAW photos right out of UFRaw often show significant noise that looks like CCD noise to me. I don't know if this is the camera or UFRaw, but UFRaw offers a number of conversion algorithms, and they do make a difference in noise, though none of them completely eliminate it. I think I've been seeing some noise and have been going a bit crazy trying to sharpen it out, all to the detriment of the photo. If your monitor is high enough resolution, you can clearly see the noise in the upper part of the sky.

I think I'll need to compare a max resolution TIFF file with a RAW one to see if it's the camera or UFRaw.

I've gotten a lot of feedback about sharpness, and I thank everyone for pointing it out!

Best Regards,

Jim