Reservoir & a Big Sky

[cedmondson]

I didn't have many options for composition here thanks to a 6 foot high wire fence and limited access but I quite liked the lead in lines from this position and @12mm with a CPL the sky looked like it deserved to dominate the image.

C&C always highly appreciated

[Fozzybear]

To be honest it doesn't quite work for me. The sky looks a bit odd (way too blue and seems patchily coloured - some kind of tone-mapping?) and really distracts the eye, especially as the composition is a bit messy. The ground doesn't have enough contrast to stand out and looks a bit dark. The walls in the lower right are interesting but the line your eye follows along them from the bottom of the frame just leads you back out of frame on the right side.

Not an easy view to photograph well I think, especially if there is limited access/view but if you sort out that sky and the brightness/contrast it might help a bit.

[cedmondson]

Originally Posted by Fozzybear

To be honest it doesn't quite work for me. The sky looks a bit odd (way too blue and seems patchily coloured - some kind of tone-mapping?) and really distracts the eye, especially as the composition is a bit messy. The ground doesn't have enough contrast to stand out and looks a bit dark. The walls in the lower right are interesting but the line your eye follows along them from the bottom of the frame just leads you back out of frame on the right side.

Not an easy view to photograph well I think, especially if there is limited access/view but if you sort out that sky and the brightness/contrast it might help a bit.

Thanks for your frankness. I need this kind of feedback to improve I guess.

Composition seems to remain by far my biggest Achilles heel. I thought this wasn't great compositionally but still OKish Obviously not.

As for colour - I tried to even up a sky that graduated left to right thanks to CPL and the angle of the shot. I burned the left hand side a little and dodged the right. I find this really difficult though - my efforts are usually way more blotchy. No tone-mapping though. In retrospect, this struck me as one of the bluest and most contrasty skies I'd photographed so maybe I tried too hard to accentuate it and it didn't come off.

[Brammers]

It is okish! Too much foreground, too little detail in the trees. It's certainly bold!

When using the CPL at such wide angles you're going to get uneven polarisation - that results in the random blues here. You have to accept this and make it a part of the image, try placing the polarisation in accordance with the rule of 3rds :P

Otherwise, not bad!

[Tobers]

To be bold as wel....

Composition-wise, there's too much uninteresting space on the left.

The main point of interest of the pic is the curving walls. I'm interested in them, so the left side of the image is not very interesting by comparison. It is useful to put a bit of the shore and lake there to show the situation, but not half the frame. The result is that your lead lines lead you out of the picture to the right not into it.

I'd suggest when you look at the scene, try and work out what the focal point is. Then frame the picture around it to have enough "background" (could be at the sides/top/bottom as well) to show the situation it is in, and you'll probably come out with a much better pic.

[Liquid101]

I agree with most of what has been said.

I think it might have been improved with a little less colour saturation, a reframing to bring the curved wall right down to the right hand corner and a slight rotation to the left.

Perhaps getting a little lower and closer to the Dam wall.

Obviously, your restricted view may have made this impossible.

EDIT: something like this maybe (quick mockup)

[Fozzybear]

That looks better, a bit more balanced.

[cedmondson]

Originally Posted by Liquid101

I agree with most of what has been said.

I think it might have been improved with a little less colour saturation, a reframing to bring the curved wall right down to the right hand corner and a slight rotation to the left.

Perhaps getting a little lower and closer to the Dam wall.

Obviously, your restricted view may have made this impossible.

EDIT: something like this maybe (quick mockup)

Thanks for this. I really appreciate the time & trouble you've taken to produce the 'mock-up'
You're right that I couldn't actually get that view / composition in reality - but your efforts inspired me to figure out how to use the transform tool in Photoshop
I'm intrigued to know how you got the sky to look as 'inky'? I'd raised vibrance (in Lightroom) by a few points and increased saturation on 'blues' by about 12 points (plus a bit of dodging and burning) but I agree it didn't look right and actually the kind of effect you've achieved is much closer to what I wanted.