This Old Houseby
cutlassdude70Comment by boyd2000: Greetings from the Critique Club
You made a great find with this house. Also living in Southern California myself I know they are pretty hard to find. I like the perspective you got on this building, making it much more interesting than, for example, a straight on shot.
As you said, this is obviously HDR. It's pretty extreme here, but it works well for old buildings, bringing out the grain and other detail, as well as the clouds, which were fortunate.
The exposure is good. I like the room above and below the building. The sides give me sort of a claustrophobic feeling. Perhaps backing up some or widening to the forbidden square format would reduce that feeling. You used a very wide angle lens, but you fortunately don't have the wide-angle distortion.
The tree appears to be coming out of the roof, which wouldn't surprise me since the vent indicates there is no roof. This may be difficult to avoid while still getting the angle you want, and is definitely less objectionable than a tree coming out of someone's head, and it does add to the rustic look, but I think it would be better if it was more to the right. It is good that you had it to the right of the roof peak, and maybe that's as far as you could push it and still get the picture you wanted.
The bars or cables across the front of the house also detract from it. I don't know if it would be legal in advanced editing to clone or spot heal them out of there. It is more than power lines, so removal may be illegal. It would be worth clearing with SC before deadline.
With the above exceptions I think this is a well done shot. You may be correct about people being tired of HDR, but you basically got a 6, which is a very good score (at least I love them!). Keep it up. Let me know via PM if you have any questions or anything.
Photographer found comment helpful.
