Behind the San Diego Convention Center atop a couple of extra-wide breakwaters are the Embarcadero Marina Park. On the south side of the southern breakwater is a little fishing pier, and on that pier there are often a bunch of pigeons. And fishermen and buckets and fishing rods, but I felt a little too intimidated to take pictures of them.

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/1.4, shutter 1/4000 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing: cropped; pushed recovery adjustment; two curves layers to reduce exposure and add contrast.

Thoughts for improvement: The main thing for this one is to do a better job getting the exposure right in camera. Either waiting for better light or using an ND filter would be good for that.

This is the other reflection shot I took on my downtown shoot two weeks ago. I'm not sure this one works quite as well as the one I posted on Monday, but I still like it. I'm definitely going to have to develop a real series around this idea.

Technical information: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G lens, in manual exposure mode. Aperture f/1.4, shutter 1/1000 sec, ISO 200. Post-processing in Aperture 3: cropped in close; several curves layers for highlight recovery, black point, and contrast.

Thoughts for improvement: For a couple of reasons, I wish I had gotten in much closer. First, I don't particularly like the fence and the man's shoulder in the foreground. Second, I ended up cropping out about 3/4 of the image, which makes for a much lower resolution final image.

This one is a "B-side" from a quick shoot back in November. I had a really hard time deciding between this shot and a similar one when it was time to post. I ended up going with the other one because I liked the action of the wave and the textures in the extra rocks, but I've always liked the sparseness of this image and the roughness of the water. Which do you think is better?

Technical info: Shot with a Nikon D40 and Nikkor 55-200mm VR DX lens, in manual exposure mode. Focal length 200mm, aperture f/5.6, shutter 1/250 sec, ISO 400. Post-processing in Aperture 3: yellow filter BW preset; several curves layers for contrast and exposure adjustment; desaturated yellows; burned over the seal; intensify contrast brush over the water; added vignetting.

Thoughts for improvement: I can't decide if the vignetting is too heavy or not.