a cold day on a cold pond

I was at my friends house this weekend. he's an interesting guy. he's the one in almost everyone of my skiing shots and EVERYONE of my snowskating shots.
there's a pond behind his house and it was half frozen over with about 2-3 inches of ice and there was a ring of water around the frozen circle. He decides to get a paddle boat and a shovel and cut the ice in two. I ran all around the lake th get these shots
I would like some critique on these. I wanted to post the ISO, apperature, shutter speed, but it was all over the place, i was changing everything constantly with the coulds.

#1 the non frozen part of the lake.
http://photo.ringo.com/203/203163962O042985915.jpg

#2 there he goes
http://photo.ringo.com/203/203164006O061998417.jpg

#3
http://photo.ringo.com/203/203164373O813878217.jpg

#4
http://photo.ringo.com/203/203163982O398864611.jpg

#5 victory
http://photo.ringo.com/203/203163972O137215487.jpg

#6
http://photo.ringo.com/203/203164177O822778941.jpg

#7
http://photo.ringo.com/203/203164262O627526460.jpg

#8
http://photo.ringo.com/203/203164270O032002997.jpg

#9 Rusty himself
http://photo.ringo.com/203/203165412O969960508.jpg

I won't comment on the subject nature or the actual photos individually just yet, just point you towards my photo editing thread. I urge you to give my workflow a try, just differ the sharpening values. I think it could make these images much better. http://forums.photographyreview.com/...ad.php?t=31105 just give it a try. No saying it will actually work, just try out a new thing to see if you can improve on the final image. What are you shooting for image settings? large fine?

that's good to know, but i'm still paying off my 1d and everything else before I get a good photoshop, i'm still running off of the arcsoft that came with the camera.
My work flow with ArcSoft is pretty much the same as yours, the unsharpen mask just has different avaliable settings. Another problem with ArcSoft is, it does a terrible job resizing, the full versions look better than these do.
I see that the last once could use some contrast, but i spent a lot of time burning and dodging that one to get it to look as good as it does, I was done with it. If I ever do anything with these photos, i'll fix it.

Z, Run down to costco and pick up PS Elements 5.0. It's under $100.00 and it better than the bundled software. A thrifty alternative:-). It may be way above you but it works good.
Jimmy B

ok, OK! i just ordered it from SoftwearOutlet.com
$48.48 with shipping

PP makes a world of different in photos, and resizing is an important factor as well. PS has got it down, so you should be happy with your results now.

i'm looking foward to it, you should see my first PS pictures around this time next week.
any comments on these pictures? I edited the 8th one to bring out the color.
I think it looks better
http://photo.ringo.com/203/203607060O886708272.jpg