Six Arched Windowsby
SoulMan1978Comment by purpleflutterby13: Greetings from the Critique Club.
First reaction: "Oh. A squint picture of a church."
You've met the challenge, you've gone for a slightly unusual composition, that's all good, but there's something about this image that doesn't quite work for me. I'll try and explain why, and I hope you consider it constructive...
I think partly it's to do with the subject matter. Churches are already ornate things in themselves, they get photographed a lot, and the picture needs to be pretty damn striking to really get a positive reaction. So just average ones tend to get an extra negative reaction of "Hmm, wow, another church. How exciting.", which the quality of the picture in itself may not entirely justify.
Composition... I like the positioning of the steeple, but I don't like the angle of the church, it makes me feel dizzy. And those gravestones poking out of the bottom right of the picture seem a bit out of place. So maybe the first thing to suggest would be to experiment with different amounts of zooming, positions and angles, and try and find one that really works.
Since the editing rules now allow it, you could also try playing with tonemapping multiple exposures. I know you couldn't have done it handheld, but if you do decide to go back with a tripod...
Another problem I had with the image was that I find the light and the colours a bit unappealing. The light is mainly flat, except for those awkward tombstone shadows. And the colour comes across as either too warm (the church) or too cold (the steeple). Might be an idea to tweak with those separately in post-processing, and try and get the colour temperatures to work.
Maybe some dodging and burning or soft light layers would make the light more interesting, but there's only so much you can do. Instead, a more fun way to do it might be to do a long exposure and selectively light up bits of the church with a flashlight, or set off your flash manually a couple of times in different places. Just something to experiment with.
Anyway, sorry, I don't find this image works for me, but I'd be intrigued to see if you could make it work... So a little personal challenge could be to go back and reshoot the same church, play with it, and see what else you could come up with :)
Good luck and hope this helps.
Jelena
Photographer found comment helpful.
