spoli

I always found architectural photography challenging. Nature is more forgiving, but what man created is too "geometrical".

This image has good lighting that helps to convey the main feature: the stone used to decorate the façade of this building.

What is missing:

• The building has no base - i.e. a sidewalk or a small portion of the street might have helped; if you look at the image, there is enough sky space on top that could have been reduced in order to get to the street level (assuming this was the widest angle you could use).
• The perspective is distorted - without a special lens for architectural work (e.g. tilt-shift lens) the only option left is the perspective correction that can be applied later in post-processing; don't forget to shot in such a way that you can crop after correction without losing parts of your main subject. Again, using a wide angle helps. But getting farther away from the subject (if possible) helps even more (the perspective distortions are lower at narrower angles).
• The wire on the right top corner could have been eliminated in post-processing as well (e.g. using the healing brush in Photoshop). This is a really minor issue anyways.

See my attempt to fix the last two issues. And always try more that one shot of the same place using different compositions, lighting, exposure. Then you can select the better one.

I hope this helps.

If this is just an occasional snap it is not bad at all. But if you had a bit more in mind, I would suggest few things:

• Flowers need good light chosen with care; shadows rarely provide good results (sometime you can fix things in post processing but don't rely too much on it). Try the sunset or early morning light to get a different angle and experiment until you find something different.
• Another unwanted effect of shadows is that the colors may not look always right: you probably noticed that most cameras render colors nicely in sunlight while everything in the shadows may look a bit "blueish"; in you case the rose has shades of purple in place of red. You may want to play a bit with the white balance and try a warm tone.
• Sharpness helps the flower to "pop-up" better. Blurring the background can make it even better sometimes. You may try a larger aperture (in aperture priority mode) with a good lens. A prime lens may help a lot. Sharpening in post-processing is also a good idea when applicable.
• Many like darker backgrounds (even black if possible); the idea is the same - make the flower "pop-up" better. In real life is difficult but try to look for a background that is not too reach in details that distract the eye.

I know I'm not saying something new here. But a word of advice helps sometimes: we are all here to learn. I attached an attempt to fix few things in post-processing. You will be the judge.

Maybe I misinterpreted your intentions. In this case don't take me too seriously. In the end I'm not a professional photographer either...

Tarek, I tried the B/W. It's fine but not great either. I'm all for B/W when it works, but here the colors are just enough to suggest the atmosphere without distracting the viewer. I might be wrong. We are all subjective in our choices.

Joseph, there was another tree on my right even closer. I took another shot a bit later but I couldn't avoid it (see the attachment). While the light was even more spectacular, that tree spoiled the photo. I know, some cropping might have saved it in some degree, but the composition wouldn't have been the way I intended. Maybe another form factor (square in place of 4:3)? Decisions, decisions :-)

Thank you everyone for commenting.

Nice action photo. It reminds me of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" movie where the main characters "fly" in battles.

Excellent B/W capture in natural conditions (hard to identify a hint of fill light). The old and almost WWII style of the photo combined with the costumes and the inconspicuous details of the ambient makes one to believe that this is really an old photography found in a drawer and touched a bit for our taste.

No matter when it was taken, the scene looks authentic and credible.

I like the framing too: simple and elegant -- bringing us back in the present.

Great work!

All right... I've been playing a lot with this beautiful photo. And, honestly, I think I like more the unprocessed image, with the flowers abundantly flooding it.

Yes, we can limit the photo to its main subject by a lot of post-processing options: de-saturating the background, making it softer and darker, cropping until we have one flower and the butterfly, then enhancing the butterfly locally with a mask appropriately tailored... See my try.

However, the way I see it now, the whole point of this photo is to have both the butterfly and the flowers as subject. They need each other for the natural balance of things. After tinkering with it for half an hour I returned to the original.

Katherine, it is really a nice and delicate capture "as-is".

Others may differ. I don't.

Thanks for sharing.

Very good capture from real life. I think the B/W conversion was a wise choice. The image is reach in tones and color would not have helped to make it better.

I noticed that the scene appears a bit slanted. Is it my impression? I tried a quick fix by rotating to the right by ~2°. Well, it doesn't matter too much anyway!

Thank you for sharing!

Kootenay Lake (British Columbia). I wasn't equipped with everything a

photographer dreams of... However, the result was good enough to

remind me a stormy (but in the end spectacular) day.

As usual, any comments will be very much appreciated.

Thank you.

This not an HDR photo. At the time the photo was taken, I had a Canon G2 and no tripod; in these conditions it was inconceivable to try exposure bracketing (plus that a bit of wind would have moved the trees anyway). As consequence, I exposed for the highlights and hoped for something usable. It worked out reasonably well.

The new digital cameras come with high resolution A/D converters (e.g. 14-bit per channel in place of 8...10-bit for the older cameras) allowing for much larger dynamic ranges if you shot RAW. In this case you can recover more from the shadows and get results almost like bracketing HDR photography.

All in all, it was a lucky shot that required very little post processing.

Thanks for the comments.

Thank you for visiting and for the encouraging words.

Excellent! And funny too!

Nice composition, good light, perfect background. Some may not agree with me but I really like the flowers in the middle-ground.

Great shot!

Excellent shot in a good light. The perfect focus on the bird allows all the details to be seen. The blurred background could have been a bit darker but this hardly happens in real conditions. I've been shooting some wild life myself and never got so lucky to get the perfect background. Some post processing may help, but in this case it is probably not required.

Great work!

I know, everybody tries macro one time...

I was tempted to pass on this one. But there was something that kept me here more than few seconds. It is a well balanced composition that has a lot of things right: depth of field, light, perfectly blurred background and a foreground subject in perfect focus. Of course there are others with similar qualities but I like this one today. It is probably the lateral light that gives this photo something that I need - a sense of place between the small things that we usually ignore.

Well done!

You have to be very lucky to get everything working your way. I wasn’t

that lucky! But I was fortunate enough to get a Humpback Whale jumping

right in front of the boat I was in with the camera bursting in the

right direction. However, the boat was facing outwards, in the

opposite direction of the shore. I turned 180° and took a picture to

use later as a background (obviously flipped to match the light

direction). I’m glad I did it. A bit of Photoshop work at home

produced this image. In a way not too far from reality: the Humpback

Whale was still in its own habitat!

Are you thinking of lens? I know that in Romanian we use the word "obiectiv" for the lens of a camera but "objective" in English means purpose or goal.

As consequence, I have to assume "testing a (new?) lens".

Well, the result may have some technical value for you, but for the rest of us there is very little to comment on. Maybe you can clarify what you were looking for with this test. Only then we might be able to offer some feedback.

Your subject reminds me of Ernest Borgnine: well, a more serious version of him, maybe a distant cousin. His eyes are definitely talking to you and, through your photo, to us.

Nice casual portrait very well executed.

This is a stunning landscape. I'm impressed by the sense of space and altitude combined with a good composition and depth of field. The shadows of the clouds are very effective to communicate the height of the place you were when taking this photo. I hope I'll get there one day :-)

Job well done!

Absolutely beautiful photographic work. Even in B/W it would have been nice, but these colors made it perfect in communicating the mood, the atmosphere of this place.

Your wonderful photo made me wanting to see more: I visited your gallery and I'm impressed. I take my hat off to you and to your talent.

I know that the highlights were overblown. The shot was done in a hurry -- I was hiking with my wife and a group of friends -- I had to let the camera decide. Bracketing might have been a solution. As you know, being "on-the-run" with the camera it is probably taking a tall on good technical execution. Otherwise, you get the idea :-)

I tried a post-processing fix -- see attachment. Unfortunately, there is too little improvement to deserve the effort. You will be the judge.

Thanks for the comments.

Was this shot just a lucky one? I've got a few with the bee inside :-)

Excellent capture and nice bokeh!

I'm not convinced that compressing the dynamic range would enhance the artistic value of this image. Definitely you can go for what Ben suggested and enhance the area under the arch. Will it look much better? Technically, maybe. Artistically not so much, as the contrasts make the image more dramatic. What I see excellent into this image is the great detail right below the sun; if the blown highlights were the price you had to pay for the details, I think you made the right choice. I doubt that shooting earlier would have been revealed so much detail. The three shots solution (bracketing) and combining them later would have been a great option to have just to try and see what works best.

If shooting in RAW format, it may be possible to recover some of the lost highlights - maybe (partially) the color of the sky under the arch. If the photo was taken in JPEG format, there is very little you can do now.

However, as I said, I like the picture - it is a good shot with a good composition taken in a daring light.

You are not only a photographer of high altitudes but you seem to enjoy the sea level as well. With this photo you gave me an idea where to stop on my next trip to Seattle (I live in Vancouver area and I shop sometimes South of the border).

I really like this reflection of the moon on the water -- it enhances the calming and relaxing effect that this image suggests. I would add a fragment of Moonloght Sonata to start dreaming...

This photo is a good example of simple things that communicate emotionally with the viewer without being a masterpiece of photographic techniques: it is enough just being there with a camera and seeing what others seem to ignore.

Thank you for making me dreaming today...

There is rarely something more beautiful that a landscape with a valley that opens before our eyes. So many photographic planes from the grass in the foreground to the hills in farther background. An excellent composition with good lighting and great colors executed with skill and heart. You definitely changed my mood (after a gray and muggy afternoon). Many thanks.

Sometimes the light brings simple things into our attention. I almost

missed this one when my wife said "Look!" -- I own her this one.

The background is intentionally desaturated to an almost B/W to

highlight the fern; otherwise the image is not manipulated.

Any comments are welcome. Thanks.

To see Sherman Peak from above -- that is something. I was lucky to see it from below :-)

For those who haven't seen this place before, it is hard to imagine the distance between the snow in the foreground and Sherman Peak in the middleground -- the peaks are close but not that close. What was the focal length you used there?

I think being there and looking down must have been a shivering experience.

Nice picture in a very good light. Thanks for sharing.