znabal

Thanks Tamara. This was a long exposure a bit after sunset. It was f/8 30 sec at ISO 100. Mixed lighting which if I remember correctly included: a little remains of the pink sunset on the cliffs in the middle; a street lamp of sorts on the rocks on the right; and some kind of spot or klieglights on the structure and water on the left.

I also agree with the crop, but what is more important to me is the image rotation. As it stands, all the parallel lines of the pillars and windows (especially on the attention holding white building) tilt to the left. I think it looks better if the image is rotated slightly to make those more straight, and it appears to me that Mary did so in her cropped version. -jeffl

Thanks for looking Carlos. The color of the sky might not be your monitor, the storm was one of the real ugly kind with clouds that were a combination of green, black and orange. The sun peeking out behind me illuminated the pyramid and made the clouds more threatening looking than they really were.

I think I like your second crop, taking off a bit of sky, best. With regards to saturation, you might want to do the saturation selectively, minimizing any additional saturation on the sunlit distant hillside. At least for me, the hill is what clues my eye into the extra saturation and says "too much". Compositionally, my eye went upstream, into the hills, then back into the details of the rocks in the stream bed mid-frame. jeffl

Joseph, thanks for looking and for your suggestion of black and white. I have the raw file of this and probably a 100 more or so of the tombstones in this park under a huge variety of lighting and other conditions. At some point, I'll get to messing around with some of them as B & W. This park is literally about 25 meters out my front door, so I'm sure to take more too. The color cast is from the street lamps. I have always been very intrigued by the different "color" of light sources, especially at night. Now with digital, I'm probably 100 times more likely to actually grab the camera and tripod and go shoot when I see possibilities. 3 of the 9 I currently have posted here are night shots illuminated by various artificial light sources. Fog is another favorite of mine, not just because of the ability to suggest distance or depth, but also due to its tendency to "monochromize" (my made up word) the scene, leaving me a scene that is various shades of one dominate color & black. thanks again -jeffl

Well it looks like my upload blew out the cloud :( jeffl

Steven,

 

To rotate it enough to make the cathedral straight while keeping the cross costs you a little bit on each side of the photo. I did a quick job of it in photoshop before I even gave my first comment to check to make sure nothing critical on the sides was lost (to my eye, it wasn't) and to make sure lightening the lower part a little didn't make the photo look fake or hokey (again, to my eye it didn't). Here is what I came up with originally, hope you don't mind.- jeffl

Steven, I'll make a couple of comments on this one because this it is so obviously different from the rest of your portfolio.

 

I like the composition, primarily the way you have the railing and walkway coming from the lower left. And then the slash of color provided by the row houses and ferry station(?) across the middle to contrast with the gray stone of the cathedral. The two things I'd do to make it more to my tastes is rotate the frame (about 2 degrees CCW) to make the cathedral straight, leaving the distortion and key stoning to affect less critical and less noticeable items in the frame. And last, like a lot of times when you're somewhere traveling, I don't think you had the best light and probably couldn't sit there all day or how ever long it might take to get great light (along with the nice clouds, I like blue skies with clouds:). Because of the lighting, I'm thinking I would lighten up the lower part of the frame, especially the cathedral and colored houses....unless you are going for a more somber or moody feel. If that is the case, I'd have to think about it some more, but then the nice white cloud in the middle becomes problematic for me. jeffl

Steven, I originally saw this in your comment in the feedback forum. I didn't rate this photo (I never rate any photos). Here are some comments though that

might provide some insight on the divergent ratings.

 

I generally like the idea of the photo. However, I think perfect symmetry

would have caused tension and been more interesting. The lack of symmetry; her head not being straight on, the apple not appearing to be exactly in the middle of the jacket lapels, bothers me sort of like a horizon that is slightly tilted. Yet I can easily understand that some people may not be troubled by this. I would also like to see texture in the blacks, the jacket and hair. Others may think that texture in the blacks would distract from the apple, which the black frames. I really like the color of the apple (and it is probable that others don't:)

- jeffl

 

Thanks for looking

Thanks for looking Claire. Of the countless places I've been, Guatemala is certainly the most colorful -jeffl