Good morning everyone,
I heard about the site after catching the videos on You Tube and I am a big fan already. I've had my camera for about 2 months now after being inspired at the Philadelphia Guild Fine Art Festival. I am just looking for some feedback on two of my early photographs that seem to be a favorite of family, friends and coworkers.
The first of the boat in fog is pretty simple, a 24 second exposure taken on a foggy evening on the bay.
The second of the barn has a few elements I was wondering about. One being the tilting horizon, if it added to the perspective of the shot or would be better off leveling out.
Neither shot had an in depth post processing effort, just some adjusting of the color levels and curve in Lightroom. Still learning a lot of the fine tuning that is involved with post, (not that we ever stop learning) so any feedback would be great.
Hi Brian,
Welcome to the group. A few comments for you.
The catamaran image is nicely done. Good horizon placement and inclusion of the poles on the left visually balance the catamaran on the right . My only suggestion would be to not crop off the top of the mast as it feels missing and is a distraction.
The barn image is a cool perspective, and I like the fence leading the eye to the barn. The warm colors work well. The foreground leaves and grass being out of focus is slightly a distraction but it is a personal taste thing. The horizon line not being level is more distracting to me. You might have made this choice to get the back edge of the barn vertical. The combo of the foreground and horizon makes the image feel edgy, which i find intriguing (If you choose to level the horizon, then the barn may look distorted due to the perspective so you will likely need to use the distortion fixes in LR as well).
All in all -congrats and keep them coming!
Mike
Tilting up or down will cause vertical edges to converge either to the top or bottom respectively, as we all know having seen the effect thousands of times with the converging verticals of tall buildings. In landscapes, horizons can be unpredictable due to all sorts of problems to do with sloping land, obscured views from builtings or woodlands etc. So, to level a shot in post the trick is to find or imagine a vertical, in the centre of the frame and ensure it is vertical in our image. The barn above may not have a vertical exactly in the middle although the nearest corner looks pretty close. In Photoshop, command R, to get rulers to appear then click on the ruller to the left and drag across the picture, a guide will appear and move across the picture. Place it in the middle of the frame. You can use snapping to do this acurately, View>Snap>Snap To>Document Bounds. Or simply read off the top ruler for the total width and divide by 2 to identify the vertical centre. Either way, then place you guide appropriately.
Next use Edit>Transform>Rotate to highlight the picture then click outside the picture area and move your mouse from side to side to tilt the picture so the chosen vertical edge lines up with the guide or appropriately just off angle for verticals near but not quite in the middle. Of course, you can also use View>Show>Grids to provide a grid pattern so one can assess "verticals" not near the centre so a building in the middle of the picture without a vertical central edge to assess might have a vertical edge near each side of the picture area and by ensuring the left and right wall edges slope equally then you wil also have got it right.
In the barn shot the near edge may be close to the centre but it is not actually dead straight so a little care and thought will be needed. If it is just off cente then a very small angle is required. This is the best way without a true horizon being available to get a perfect angle.
Seascapes usually have good horizons , so using either of the above processes against the horizon solves the problem. Of course the guide would be dragged from the top in this case. In the seascape the angle is more critical than in a natural landscape. A built-up landscape is also pretty critical as the vertical buildings etc are expected to be perfectly vertical, whereas trees and a half fallen down timber shed can be a tad off and the horizon can be at any angle depending on the topography.
Mike, I agree with you on both counts in the barn photo. I will mess around with some cropping options and see if I can get the entire foreground in focus without removing too much if it.
Ian, thank you for the detailed explaination. That will be a big help moving forward with this photo.
Thank you both again for the critique.
I'm no professional, so i don't have too much to say, but I absolutely love the perspective and having the foreground out of focus. I also really love how the barn and the fence have that sort of old and weathered look and how you incorporated the leading lines technique with the fence, how it leads your eye to the barn, then to the sunset. Absolutely gorgeous, great job!
Thank you Jayden, I have attached the edited versions, one with the unfocused foreground the other with it cropped out. I like the wide angle look of the cropped version but just hope it didn't drop the horizon too far. I like the larger foreground in the first one but I think if it was focused all the way through it would look great. I also boosted the highlights a little in order to bring out the leaves and the light coming off the side of the barn I just hope i didn't blow out the sunset too much. I know that can be fixed so with a little more work I think it will be good.