What a beautiful photograph! I like this very much.

Now is the light coming at a 45 degree angle as required for the assignment? I suppose so; it seems to be coming from the left of the camera. It's fairly low; I can tell the few shadows that we can see are quite long. So the sun is moderately low but I would say probably about a 45 degree angle or maybe a little more. The important thing is that it is such a well-composed photograph.

I'm very interested in your note about trying to use as slow a shutter speed as you could while at the same time trying to prevent camera shake. There actually is a little bit of camera shake in this picture, but the incredible thing is that this is one of those rare cases where I think it actually adds to the photograph. The highlights within the trees that gently accent the variations of colors are just slightly blurred, which gives it somewhat of a painted quality. I think it adds to the beauty. And then when you add to it the fact that even though the water looks very placid, it must have actually been moving quite a bit. You can tell by the reflections in the water that are much more blurred than the trees themselves. That indicates movement of the water while the shutter was open.

The composition is just excellent, the way you used the foreground to add a greater feeling of depth to the photograph. This is well done.

I found this photo interesting because you took something that in of itself is not particularly interesting and made a lovely photograph of it. I think the composition is very good and the balance is very good.

There's no doubt that the light is coming from the side. You can tell from the highlights and shadows that accentuate the ribbed feeling of the wall. The sky is a lovely rich blue and the colors are very good.

This definitely fills the need of the assignment.

You don't need much imagination to appreciate the beauty of your backlighting shot. When you see something like this, you just say to yourself "Thank God I've got my camera with me."

This is beautiful. The interplay of the highlights and the shadows on the water, the subtle changes of color, and the positioning of the birds are excellent. I am surprised that at f/22 the foreground is as out of focus as it is. On the other hand I see this was done with a 300mm lens and so I guess this would pretty much explain it. But, it doesn't bother me at all. I actually feel that the out of focus foreground enhances the picture. This is beautiful work.

I personally would have placed the birds a little more to the right in the photograph, a little closer to a one thirds, two thirds relationship. But when the print was made, an 8x10 is not in the same format as 35mm and so you had to crop some of it out. I would be curious to know if it was cropped equally on both sides, or if more was cropped out on the left or right.

The lighting is obviously very soft. We have highlights and shadows but the transition from highlight to shadow is slow and soft and even.

We've got lovely detail in the hair, but because this was shot at f/4 the background is just enough out of focus so that it adds emphasis to our subject as opposed to distracting from it.

My main concern, however, is the direction of the light. Even though this is coming from a very large light source, it is coming from the right of the camera. Consequently the brightest highlight in the photograph is the girl's ear. I think it would have been better had you simply moved more to your right so that the girl's face would have followed you. Then, more of that light would have been in front of her face and there would be more of a modeling effect on the cheek and the face as opposed to that hightlight.