Setting Sun

DRicherby

4

5 Oct 2010 - 11:35 PM

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For me, the shadows at the bottom are unimportant. Shadows that just poke in from the edge of the frame can be annoying and hint at things outside the frame but these ones, which cover much of the grass, just read as texture, to me. In contrast, I do think it's worth cloning out the isolated little blob of foliage nearest the top-right corner, though I think the next one down is close enough to the rest that it appears connected. Both disappear anyway when the image is rotated.

I see two problems here. Frank's pointed out the lean, which definitely needs correcting. It's easily done in software but it's best to get it as close as you can with the camera because rotating forces you to crop. Indeed, in my mod, the statue's hand comes much too close to the top of the frame because of this. Frank's mod avoids this, probably by extending the canvas and cloning in more sky. There are various tricks you can use to do get a level shot — many cameras will display a grid of lines to help you line things up; if yours won't, perhaps you can use vertical and horizontal lines in the pattern of autofocus points to do something similar.

I also think you have a white-balance problem, which has made the sky a rather unnatural shade of cyan. Remember that, on auto white-balance, your camera will attempt to 'correct' for the colour of the light that's illuminating the scene. When you're shooting around sunset, then, the camera will try to correct for the orange light by adding blue. The result is that skies can look unnaturally cyan and overly saturated. With a clear blue sky late in the day, it's best to shoot on daylight white balance, to avoid this. Correcting after the fact, use your image editor to set the colour temperature to somewhere between about 5500K and 6700K — whatever you think looks most natural. For my mod, I set the temp to 5500K.

Constructive Critique!

Philo (e2 Member)

3

5 Oct 2010 - 11:38 PM

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Hi Paul, don't bin this image as there are some really good positives, it just needs a bit of tweaking. You have some lovely light falling on the statue and I like the flowers in the foreground. The image does need straightening and the shadows require lifting. I have done this in my mod and also cropped left to place the statue on a third. I cropped some from the bottom to retain balance but left the flowers.
The exposure would not have been easy in this strong light but you have handled it well. If you shoot in RAW you can recover the shadow detail better and easier.
Phil

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paulbroad

5

5 Oct 2010 - 11:47 PM

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The basis is a nice record image. There are some colour issues and you must always look for leaning verticals - although you should only correct them when necessary. Sometimes converging verticals adds to an image - but not here.

I would also have got in a bit closer, either by zoom or my legs, and filled the frame with the statue itself, cutting out most of the surroundings which drag the eye from the subject.
Paul

Constructive Critique!