Sounds great!

Like your ideas here, especially the framing of the heron with the foliage (#2), and the backlit steam in #5.

There are some things to think about. Make sure your main subject is easy to identify. In #3, for example, the heron is difficult to distinguish against the dark background, although the reflection stands out. And while I love that vapor in #5, along with the distant ducks, they're out of focus; does that mean your subject is the foreground ducks? If so, they're more difficult to pick out. Some post-processing (kicking up the shadow detail) might help. The boat simply looks underexposed (do you know why that happened?) and, centered in the frame, makes for a very static composition. Perhaps moving it off center to the right would, so to speak, give it some place to go, and give the viewer a better sense of anticipation. As always, be willing to edit, to weed out those photos that don't accomplish your goals. Sorry if all this sounds critical, but I wish more folks had pinged on my "first attempts." You're on your way--learn and above all, have fun!

You talkin' to me? Cool, very cool!

What bothers me even more are the redundancies: past history and past experience, my personal experience, plan ahead, free gift (free bonus gift is even worse), three AM in the morning...you get the idea.

Time lapses aren't difficult (check out the manual, or YouTube, and practice a bit). With the D850, you have the option of letting the camera create a .MOV file for you at HDR (1920x1080) resolution, or you can go up to 8K, because a time-lapse is, after all, only a sequence of stills. Not sure how you turn those into a movie, but there's doubtless lots of info in YouTube land.

Having done lots of HDR time-lapse sequences, my recommendation is to do the minimum interval of 1 frame a second, which gives you 60 frames a minute, meaning (my apologies--you can likely do the math yourself) that if you play it back at 30 frames per second, that minute of real time will play back in 2 seconds, 10 minutes in 20 seconds, and so on. The reason is that if the effect is too slow for your liking, you can always bump up the playback speed, but if you go the other way (say, a frame every 2 seconds) and want to slow it down, it'll begin to look choppy.

Just my two cents. As I said, practice...and have fun!

Both ethereal and lovely, with my favorite being the first with its better definition (I'm guessing the second is a much longer exposure.) I'm also thinking a time-lapse would have been intriguing.

What fun to find our old efforts and work on them with today's tech! (Doing just that with my old slides.) Yes, I'm afraid "overly soft" is the operative phrase on your rework, to the point where it's too distracting for me to enjoy. But if you can solve that, do post again. Cheers!

Thank you--I certainly got a good sky to work with!

Appreciate that very much--thank you!

THREE thumbs up--wow, hey, thanks, Don!

Appreciate the kind thoughts--thanks for taking the time!

Thanks so much--yes, #3 was the winner on Facebook as well. Now...to get a good print....

Can't speak for SmugMug, or, for that matter, about sales in general, since I've had so few. However, as I'm sure you realize, once you give them a download, it's out of your hands, and--especially if it's a superior image--they can turn around and sell copies for their own profit. Not ethical, of course, but certainly possible. I might try to get the best print I could near me, pack it really well, and send them that. Pass on the costs of the print, the shipping, and a fee of your choice.

Thanks much, Daryl!

Thanks, Jerry--we land 'em now and again!