Cinque terre is a very touristic area in Italy and it is understandable why; the beautiful villages on the coast are perfect for some pictures and on this particular evening the sunset in Portovenere was incredible!
Cinque terre is a very touristic area in Italy and it is understandable why; the beautiful villages on the coast are perfect for some pictures and on this particular evening the sunset in Portovenere was incredible!
I'll try to give a thorough critique of this image after reviewing your profile.
I love the processing on this and the natural colors. What made me rank it less than 3 mainly has to do with the composition. I find my eye wandering all over this photo. Initially my eye goes to the right where the brightest part of the image is in the water reflection. Then I want to move to the peninsula but instead my eye goes to the wall at the bottom. This is the sharpest part of the image and seems to be where the focal point is, but because it only takes up maybe 15% of the frame, it doesn't feel balanced and has too little weight to it. All in all I find myself wanting a stronger composition with a more interesting subject matter before I could feel comfortable keeping it in my portfolio.
Suggestions, I'd try to move the camera significantly to the left or right to open up the scene. Obviously moving to the far right might lose the sunset but could add more interesting side lighting as well (this appears to be backlit with tones lifted from the shadows). Tilting the camera down could add some weight to the bottom of the frame but I could also see that adding a strange "looking down" perspective from this perched up position. I'm not sure if the horizon is straight but I find myself falling to the right side as if everything is tilted a bit.
Again, I love the tones of this and the colors, but I just can't get excited about the subject or composition. I rated it a 2 as it needs work, but I'm also left not sure if I would return to this specific scene as I'm not sure the subject is stronger than other scenes in Cinque Terre.
Thank you again for taking the time to looking at my pictures and giving me an honest feedback, I really appreciate it.
I can actually quite agree with you, this is not one of my favourite pictures, I visited Cinque Terre as it’s of course a beautiful place and I am Italian and live within a few hours so it was a pity not to visit but I am usually not attracted by overtouristed areas.
The reason I choose this composition which is indeed not balanced is because there is an area full of bushes under the stoned wall from where I took the photo that wasn’t nice at all and a lot of buildings on the left too. I didn’t find either of them appealing to my personal taste.
Also this is a pretty standard composition and I choose to zoom a little bit more on the main subject to make something different because pretty much all the photos of this place look like the same.