Stairwell

All comments appreciated

I like this. I really enjoy the curve of the railing next to the jaggedness of the shadows. And I like how the railing on the left follows a big sweeping curve while the one on the right is a much tighter arc. At first glance it's quite striking and invites a closer look.

 

The top of the stairs loses some detail and gets a little muddled with the window and whatever is in the background. My eye wants to follow the stairs all the way up but I keep getting stuck at the transition from light to shadow.

 

Overall, I really like it. The lighting at the bottom of the stairs is great and I like the shapes. It makes a good first impression.

Very unusual, good capture. Pity the upper part, too black

Thanks so much for your comments guys. This is actually a 3 level outdoor spiral stair that leads down to the boardwalk along the Long Beach waterfront. I had been watching it for a few days, trying to figure out how to photograph it. This was the best attempt I made.

The white area is the sky beyond, and there was just no way to get rid of it unfortunately. I agree that the loss in detail at the top of the stair is a pity, but slide film has a pretty narrow dynamic range- I got as much out of it as I could. I tried a couple different exposures and this was the best one- increased exposure blew out the bottom highlights.

Well seen and well captured Tim. I was thinking at first maybe you should have cropped the Top darker area and isolate the steps/shadows, but then decided you did the right thing leaving it in. Regards, Tim.

Tim- thanks for your input- it gives me some ideas to play around with. I can see some real abstractions with creative crops here. This was hellishly difficult to decide on an exposure, and there was now way to get away from that darn flash of sky on the left and maintain the composition.