Sugar Creek Covered Bridge

It's a nice image of a good subject, but I think it could be better. First off, it needs to be leveled. That's an easy fix in any image editor. Or better yet get it right in camera. For an image like this one, where your in no hurry to capture a fleeting moment, take your time and get it right in camera. 5 minutes spent thinking about how to get it right when you take the picture can save you hours on the computer. For me that would mean using a tripod, getting the camera level and square with the bridge so that you can eliminate any perspective distortion. Because of the symmetrical geometric nature of the bridge it would be good to get perfectly centered, so that the corners of the bridge's walls intersect with the corners of the image. Also due to the difficult lighting conditions (bright outside, dark inside) I would take multiple exposures to get at least one exposed for the different parts of the image. If you set up on a stable tripod and took care not to move it while taking the images, combining the images post capture is relatively easy once you know what your doing.

I hope I don't come across as condescending. I wish that someone had told me this stuff a few years ago when I started taking more interest in the quality of my pictures. I figured it out the slow way, by taking a lot of less than spectacular images and slowly figuring out how they could have been better. Posting images here for critique is a good way to speed up the process.

Thanks for taking the time to leave comments, can you post your version of it, so I can see the difference, thanks.

I didn't have a version of it. What I was trying to point out was that to get it right, you really need to get it right in camera. The difference in camera positioning is a complex one difficult to impossible to fix post capture. You can fix the levelness and even some perspective distortion, but you can't really change the point of view later on.

Same with getting multiple exposures. The point is to get image information across a range of light levels that you camera can't get in one exposure. The shadows get blotchy and grainy when you try and push them later on in an image editor.

None the less, you really just barely of center. So I gave it a try. This is about as close as I could get to what I envision using the image you posted. It's not a very good representation, but  maybe it'll give you an idea. I would have liked the interior brighter and with a nice warm wood tone (by the way it seems you desaturated the bridge, it was completely lacking in color. I'm guessing you were making the landscape outside pop more by desturating the "frame".) And also I couldn't get the framing of the bridge to align as nicely with the image as I would like.