europe San Marino

Beautiful shot!! Do you know how long the exposure was??

 

I keep looking at the photo and trying to find things I would have done different, but can find none. I love the exposure for the sky. I really like the detail on the structure (can see the stones...).

 

The lights in the lower left quadrant may be a little hot...

 

Great Shot!!

 

I really wish I had used an ND grad to bring some more detail to the

darker areas at the bottom. But, I guess I wasn't smart enough to

know to do that in the field. I wasn't sure about the composition

either; whether it would be better to include some of the city lights

below, or to zoom in and frame the castle more tightly. Thanks for

your input.

I can't say that I believe that adding detail to the lights of the city would actually improve this wonderful image, but in liu of a graduated ND filter you could try just bracketing over several f/ stops and, if your sense of photographic ethics allows, copying and pasting parts of one shot over another. There are more complex ways of simulating ND filters, too.

 

The lights in the lower left are, indeed, a bit too hot, but I have not heard of any way to compensate for that. Dodging them does not work, and I have not been able to use copy-and-paste to do the trick. What you need is a team of assistants to run around with great big ND filters and place them in front of the lights themselves. Yeah, that'll work.

Beautiful. Good balance of light. Ancient castle -vs- modern city lights. Not original but very well executed.

Kenneth: It's a great image. The only thing that bothers me is the green tint of the artificial lights on the castle. They are always short on the magenta end of the spectrum. I used selective color in PS to warm it up a bit. See what you think.

It is amazing that a person as young as yourself, and into photography such a short time, even the a "lifes savings worth" of equipment, talent and lots of effort, can come up with so many winning photographs. I have been into photo.net only a short time and have seen only a very few pictures there which can compete with yours. Hooray!!

I think I like the original green light better -- makes the castle a little eerie.

The only slight quibble I have is that the castle is leaning a bit (or maybe I am -- been a long day) which I find distracting. Nice capture

You know, I thought it leaned too but when I warmed up the castle I checked it at the center and it's straight. Must be an optical illusion.

Fred Lord's selective color adjustment seems to have had the additional effect of diminishing the hot lights in the left foreground.

Either way it's a great picture, prefer the selective color adjustment.

An awesome image! I like the "warmed" version better, but either way it is breathtaking. Now all a girl needs is a white knight!

Very romantic shot indeed... The city lights give the shot its fantastic appeal. Nice repetition of colours: greenish castle light and distant city lights, and on the other hand, brownish stone wall and sky. Chapeau!

All of your shots are so colorful and beautiful. I don't ever find anything to critique. All I can do is study and learn from you with your great examples of truly outstanding art. Thank you!

It is a beautiful shot. I doubt that a graduate filter would help much. If this shot was taken a bit earlier, when there is a bit more ambient light, you might be able to capture some details and avoid having the image so contrast. But, being contrast has its own mood and is more dramatic. The composition is very nice.

Chalk up one more vote for including the city lights. For me, they add to the overall magic of the scene. Without them, just the castle, would be just a view of the castle, perhaps of interest to architects and historians.

I agree with Harold. I think the inclusion of the lights creates a nice contrast. The beauty of the castle, a purely medieval construct, lit up by the same technology as the sprawling urban landscape lost somewhere below. I think losing the lights would lose a lot of feel in this photo. All around great picture. Keep it up.

I think you beat yourself up too much in your request for a critique. You know how hard it is to control false coloring at long exposures with slides...specially with Kodak chrome film. Very nice metering and balance of two different kinds of warm and fluorescent light. If you're a purist, I think getting the right filter combination will still leave you with a trade off of color cast correction areas. Either way works (your original, or the suggested cast correction).
Very good job.