Fireworks were right after the fireplace shot
Did you notice the last shot is photo stitched using Canon's software that was bundled with the Camera. I don't have a wide angle lens so I have to lock exposure and stitch them. I am in the market for a super wide angle or a 5D with full sized sensor.
Any other suggestions? I really need to improve my landscape pics.
I'm curious why you chose f7 to shoot the tree/valley/mountain landscape? It appears the light was good enough to allow a shot handheld at least at f16, and perhaps at f22. I ask because it doesn't appear you have a foreground object in this shot you really wanted to draw our attention to. Smaller apertures (bigger f-numbers) will sacrifice maximum sharpness in a small area of the photo for increased overall sharpness throughout all the photo. In other words, those tree branches on the left might be less sharp at f16 than at f7 (I'm not certain where exactly you focused the camera for this image), but the mountain in the background would be sharper.
I find the small bit of tree branch in the upper left corner distracting. You might find it's a little stronger composition after cleaning that up with the clone stamp tool in Photoshop. This may sound nitpicky, but these are the things that can take one's photography up another level.
The panorama shot is too small to really see how good the quality is in the stitching. There are a couple of things that could improve it though. One is lighting...where ultimately all photography begins. The heavy shadows covering the foreground (I can only assume it's a beach) detract from the composition. I don't know if there's a different time of day that would allow this section to be lit or not. If not, I would suggest composing the shot in such a way that the heavy shadows are not part of the image.
There also are a couple of vehicles in the panorama...distracting (again, for me) from the purpose of a landscape shot. I'd either crop that portion completely, or more likely, since I like the overall balance of the image, I'd probably sit down and see if there was a way I could clone those items out or cover them with additional foliage taken from either the same image or a different one.
What exposure metering setting are you using? From the photos of the birds, it appears you are allowing the camera to meter the entire scene. In some cases this is okay (it works for the photo of your dog sleeping). In the shots of the bird flying it works against you somewhat. Because the water is the brightest object in the photo, the camera has metered on that because it didn't know the real subject in the photo was the bird.
Again, better light on the subject would have helped, but something you might try in the future is switching your camera to spot metering mode and taking a reading on just your subject. This technique probably works best in full manual mode on subjects that are centered in the frame. Of course centering your subject in the frame is generally faux pas, tending to make your photos look like amateur snapshots.
The way I do it (in full manual mode) is meter my subject using spot metering in the center of the lense. This allows me to get my settings correct for the exposure I want. Then I focus (using center point focus only) on whatever I've decided is to be the sharpest part of the image. While holding the shutter button halfway down to keep the focus locked where I wanted it I recompose the image in the viewfinder. Only then do I take the photo.
Obviously this works best for slow-moving or stationary objects. Try it and see what you think.
Always keep in mind that without good light, there can be no good photo.
