Jeremy,
Here's my quick variant.
[attachment=15304:flow2.jpg]
I did three things:
1, I cropped in a little from the left and up from the bottom to get rid of two rocks in the lower left that I found distracting. This lets the flow at the bottom come freely out of the picture toward the viewer (which I like; YMMV.)
2, I cloned out (badly) the bright little stone near the lower right.
And 3, I used the shadow/highlight tool (in CS3) to recapture some detail in the highlights (settings I used were: amount=30, tonal width=20, radius=20.)
I think this last step improves on the washed-out look Brian spoke of. It is an image worth playing with.
Thank you both: I think you're right about the whiteness and sharpening. I'd not thought of removing the bright stone, but I agree it's a better shot without it. I have to say that I prefer having the rocks at the lower left.
This is what I have, after a bit more fiddling:
[attachment=15316:flow.jpg]
I don't know whether it's any better than your version, Eric: the shadows are a bit darker.
I'm annoyed with myself, because this is what I was trying to capture:
[attachment=15317:flow_no_crop.jpg]
I liked the pattern the water made as it flowed out of the end of the fall, but I'd forgotten that small plants move around a lot in the breeze. A 4-second exposure meant that it became rather fuzzy, so I felt it needed to be cropped out, which lost the effect. Ah well. Live and learn.
Jeremy
