Monument to Peter the Great

I would appreciate your critique

The shadows here appear too dark, and the subject area is too cluttered, too broad. Reel it in a bit and lighten the shadows. It looks to be a great place to shoot, but you wouldn't know it by this shot.

I think that the photo lacks contrast. We really cant tell that that is a monument. You should have the top of the monument in your photo also. I also think you would have a better photo if the horizon was level.

Thank you. I agree about the photograph being too dark. I am not sure that having the top of the monument show would have helped here. The horizon, however, seems to be straight -- if I tip it to the right a bit, then the monument will tip too far to the right.

 

Here is the same monument from behind.

 

Thanks again.

 

M. Ts.

I happened to notice this discussion about the tilted horizon, so let me give you something to consider. Usually I don't do this but because i self often do corrections to perspective distortion with a software I'd like to show the effect to you too. With all respect to your work I used it to show the effect after I rotated the image 2,3 degrees clockwise and -30 degrees vertically. You have experienced the perspective distortion as you point your camera upwards, what happens to the verticals. The professional photographers may use special tilt&shift lenses or even large format cameras to keep the film plane or sensor vertical and raise the lens instead to avoid the perspective distortion. We others can use a special software in this digital time, as you can see here. Of the many alternatives I use PTLens because it can correct both perspective and also optical lens distortion, provided the lens is included in it's database, like your zoom is. So the question is: is the correction worth a 15 dollars? I'm not selling anything, just giving you a thought, a tip.

 

PS I did not crop the corrected versions so that you could see how much the required correction "eats" from the original, something I self have to keep in mind while shooting architectural photos: include extra margin around the desired view.

Markku,

 

Many thanks! I often don't notice that there is a distortion -- I am lucky enough if I can keep up with the basic exposure. I have downloaded PTLens -- it works well as long as I am following your instructions. let's see if I can figure it out on my own; I have DXO v. 4, but I have not been able to figure out how to deal with distortion issues in it -- or, to be more precise, I have never had enough time. I already have a hobby (photography), but I am very far from being retired...

 

Here is the result of my following your advice. Again, many thanks.

 

Misha

And here is the monument at it full height. Incidentally, the monument is quite unpopular in Moscow, because it's new, huge and violates historical truth: Peter the Great hated Moscow.

I am glad that my instructions helped you to work out this correction, and that you took my "demo" positively. I did some testing on DxO too, but unfortunately it didn't correct the optical distortions of my camera, Sony R1, though it claimed to do. It had been much more expensive too. Maybe later, when new camera appear?

 

One more tip: you should carefully consider if horizontal correction is required too by checking if the parallell horizontals of reality are parallell on your photo too. They must not be so, but they can fool the eye when you are controlling the levelling of the image. Then better keep eye on verticals. Sounds complicated? You better read about perspective theories - if ever this is of interest to you. By no means a must, no.