The Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Albans

I am responding to your comment about 'lack of comments', with which I totally agree. So here goes,although I am a beginner so my comments are probably worthless.

This Cathedral is local to me, I know it well, and I have never seen starbursts and blue moons. I love this picture but it would have been better without these artificial "enhancements". Rather to have cropped the right hand side than insult such an ancient, and beautiful, building.

Thank you for your comments.

 

The starbursts are artefacts of the long exposure and the small light source. The moon is blue partially because it's shining through the clouds, but mostly because I used tungsten balanced film. I can assure you, this is a straight scan from the original slide.

 

Q: How many blades does the diaphragm on my lens have?

 

A: One for each "spike" in the starburst, i.e. eight in total.

I apologise for the mistake, I still think these artifacts detract from an otherwise lovely picture though

I really like the face of the building and the moon but the right side of the building seems to detract from the image.

Front of the building is nicely exposed, pity about the floodlights washing the side, but its a very nice image!

I have received two ratings for this image. One obviously really

liked it, while the image didn't work for the other.

 

I'm about to take a lot of illuminated buildings, so I'd appreciate

your comments and ratings. Does this work for you? Is it OK, or

should I ditch it? What should I do different next time?

Nice shot - only thing that spoils it a little is the overexposed right side. Still, I really like how you've captured it.

One thing you might try (but practice first before you do any important shots) is to do double exposures. Make one exposure just as the sun goes down, and then the other exposure when it gets dark. You need a rock steady tripod for this. Once you get good at it you will get some pretty amazing photos though. Kevin