On Locust Walkby
JPRComment by floyd: Greetings from the Critique Club
First off - this is an interesting picture. I've just spent a good couple of minutes looking at it. I see that you've desaturated some colours and that's left us with a few very strong colours in the foreground. I'm left wondering if there is significance to the fact that the church is almost totally desaturated while the child and her mother are bright and vibrant. I also wish I knew more about Locust Walk - there has to be a story behind that name and I wonder if it's related to the meaning in this picture.
What I also find interesting is that the young lady and her mother have some movement left to right but where most pictures depicting movement would leave open space in front of them to move into you've left space beind them. That gives the feeling that they're leaving the scene - perhaps going to the church which has those interesting orange lights inside.
I really can't get a grip on how much of this is intentional and how much is simply an artifact of what can be achieved within the DPC rules.
Your picture certainly meets the challenge - your use of colour is interesting and is the primary focus of the picture. The cropping I've got mixed feelings about - you seem to have wanted to catch the couple and the church together but did you specifically want that lamp in shot? My own style is to crop in as much as I can so I would probably have taken out the lamp and some of the flyers on the left but that's just me.
Your exposure of the church and the foreground is good but there's some definite bleeding of sky onto the branches at the top. I imagine on the original full colour version we'd see blue fringes there too. I wonder if your use of a 1/30 exposure is the culprit here - it's also resulted in some motion blurring on the walker's feet. If the motion blur was your intention then there's little that could be done about the sky. But the focus in this picture is also a little soft - especially on the church. A smaller aperture than the f/3.2 you used would have increased your depth of field as well as perhaps eliminating the light bleeding and would still have allowed you a long enough exposure to get the motion blur.
Of course if this was an opportunity shot then all that I've just described is far too much to think about before taking the picture.
Photographer found comment helpful.