Critique #14

[autzig]

Carol, I'll critique the first image as I don't like the second at all. The church on that one is too hidden by the tree branches. The first one has some potential but it has three problems from my perspective. The lighting is very flat. I'm not sure what you can to about that outside of Photoshop. There are a lot of branches encroaching on the steeple and I'd like to see them gone. Of course you can't do anything about that in the field. The one thing you could have done in the field that would make this a better photo is crop the right side. The fence line leads the eye to nowhere and I think it is very distracting. I would have cropped it to the right of the big tree. Then the fence would have been a framing element and would have worked better.

I'll play around with it in Photoshop and see what I can do. I recently purchased Nik's Color Efex Pro 4.0. It has some very nice effects that might work here.

[autzig]

Carol, here's your photo after I cropped and used a couple of Nik's Color Efex Pro filters. I think it looks pretty good. I'm not crazy about the centering effect of the crop but I'm still satisfied.

Al

[Andy]

I agree with Al about the second photo. In addition to the fact that much of it is obscured, it just doesn't have the balance for me, that the first one does. For example, the "handicap" railing on the front nicely complements the fence. I also agree that the fence in your original tends to lead the eye out of the frame. I do note that it "returns" to the left behind the church and one might think that would "cure" the problem, but there is too much contrast between the large, in-your-face white fence and the barely perceptible fence way in the background.

I wonder whether you might have achieve a lower shooting angle (using a tripod, of course ) and kept some of the branches around the steeple?

I agree, Al that the centering effect of the crop is less than optimal. Did you try cropping some of the left side, too? I wonder whether that could work.