Rockefeller center, 2 hours after tree lighting. This is THE xmas tree of all trees and tallest. It is legendary. I had no tripod, and high ISO setting produced lots of grain. I didn't really adjust the shadows here, the middle GE building naturally disappeared in the darkness. All I did was darken the fore-perimeter. I then did some spot editing and cloning out of some lights on top. I finally placed a thin soft border and sharpened.
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In regards the the challenge topic, I find it difficult to see a strong connection. I would imaging that hurt your score considerably. But let me critique the image itself.
Composition
My first take is that my eye is led very nicely via the perspective of the two buildings. These are strong leading lines. However, once my eye gets to the apparent main subject, I do not know what to look at. The foreground lights take my attention and the last thing I notice is that there is a tree I am supposed to be looking at. Too bad about that angel and trumpet because I think there was some potential in this image. I wonder what your options were on the other side of that display?
Exposure
I think you did a good job given the lighting conditions. Night shots are very difficult. I am surprised you did not use a tripod. You did a good of job of not blowing out the highlights, or at least salvaging them. ISO 1250 of course gave you lots of noise. Some noise reduction (such as Neat Image) could have helped. I find that some very careful noise reduction with subsequent sharpening can do wonders.
Post Processing
In order to make this image successful you would have to really make the tree lights pop. To do that you might have to dodge and burn a bit to reduce the levels of the buildings and increase the brightness of the tree. The tree is lost otherwise.
If you could have just gotten rid of that foreground. I think that is the main thing that is distracting the viewer from seeing what it is you want them to see and experience. Now that the challenge is over, the clone tool could be your best friend in making this what you intended.
I don't totally understand the title but I do like the pic. The lighting on the buildings is cool and my fave part is how the color of the lihgts on the tree stand out from everything else. The angels kind of get lost in everything which is unfortunate. I would like to have seen this brought in just a little closer to make the tree more prominent.
Serious noise issues for me and the background buildings behind the tree have something funky going on. Not entirely certain what it is, but it attracts my eye and not in a good way. All that being said I can't imagine how tough this shot would be with all of the various light sources and trying to balance all that out in a clearly night shot would be almost impossible. Thank you for sharing the shot with us.
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