Reflections In The Nightby
skasubaComment by kteach: Greetings from the Critique Club!
First Impressions: Nice clear reflection and symmetry, and I like the softness of the shot. The cool blues compliment the warm glow of the light nicely (though I wonder if that was done in PS). I like the fence with the triangles too. Adds something different to the shot. Not sure about the visual composition of the shot... it's cut right in half, and while I'm not saying you should always follow the "rules" of photography, but in this case I don't feel that breaking them was helpful. It also feels just slightly tilted down towards the left? I think I would have liked to see a human element in this shot... a silhouetted person walking perhaps?
After reading all of the comments: Ahh, so the coloring was done in post processing. It feels natural (which is a compliment to the way you did it), until you think about it more logically. I'm surprised you only got a few comments, and they didn't really say much, and I also see that you had a spike of voters that gave you a 6. Perhaps that means that technically and visually the shot was good, a little above average, but just nothing that reached out and grabbed the viewer visually or emotionally.
Ideas to improve the shot: First, check to see if it really is tilted. I think the reflection of the fence might be straight, but the ground is tilted? Perhaps trying to tone down the hot spots where the lights are lit would give this shot the ability to have more of a soft, foggy feel, instead of having spots the eye is drawn in to. And, to the left, there seems to be some busy windows, the lamp, the sign... perhaps cropping just a tad from the left to have the shot end with that quiet tree would be a nice change?
Overall, this is a nice shot, and it's lucky you had the weather cooperate so nicely for this challenge. You had a good score and a nice finish with this one, but I think it just lacked that little something extra to get the voters to give you that bump.
Hope this has been helpful, and please feel free to PM me if you have any questions.
Photographer found comment helpful.