colonial williamsburg Hand-hewn beams

Tell me what you think of the handling of the subject, the digital

darkroom work and any other constructive comments you may have.

This one was made in the digital darkroom as the original was in

color and was not cropped nearly this tightly. Thanks for your time.

Your sense of composition is good David and the subject matter is appealing but what hurts this image is lack of contrast. I browsed through your portfolio and noticed several of your other photos also suffer from lack of contrast. For a photo to not appear washed out a full range of tonal ranges is what's needed. You have no real blacks here. I noticed that you use Photoshop CS. Look at levels (control-L) and notice the left hand side of the graph. Bring the bottom left arrow over to the right and see if that doesn't help your photo. A bit of sharpening wouldn't hurt either as this also contributes to the image appearing soft.

Thank you for the suggestions. I have followed your suggestions and tweaked the levels around in order to bring the the contrast into the image. I tried doing a sharpen on it, but since it was cropped from the original image which was not well composed, then enlarged, if I go much further with enlargement or sharpening, the edges pixelate noticably at this magnification. Though I think what I've done thus far is along the lines of your suggestions.