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Ja-9Comment: Critique Club Comment:
Ah,
Ja-9, we meet again.
As I said already, I really love this photo and how any reasonable human being could give this a 1 or 2 is beyond me. Up front, I gave it an 8. The capture is wonderful and the processing, while perhaps a little heavy handed on the noise reduction(?), really enhances it. It's got great contrast and details throughout and you nailed the symmetry between the footings.
What keeps this from being a really great photo for me is the intrusion of the next set of footings in the upper corners. While the walkway to the left offsets the symmetry it's not nearly as distracting as the little bit of dark on the edges. And as mentioned, there are some dark artifacts from the processing that could/should have been dealt with.
My suggestion would have been to:
1) Do your work in DFine 2.0 before going into your other tools as eliminating noise up front is much easier and better than to do it after boosting structure and contrast in Viveza and other tools as once you get the structure in the noise you have to overcompensate to eliminate it (my "heavy handed" note).
2) Use the Perspective adjustment in Free Transform (PsCC) to stretch the top of the photo a bit to get the extra footings out of the frame. Yes, the change is noticeable, but only if you knew what it looked like before.
3) Use the Dodge tool, or some other method, to lighten up the dark spots left from structuring and detail enhancement.
As for the familiarity of your subject, I suppose I haven't been around long enough to notice it, but I guess the people of the forum are sending you a message. :)
Nice work, nonetheless.
Photographer found comment helpful.
