tmjacobs

I like the tranquil atmosphere. Lovely sky & colors.

While sunlight is great for most photography, it can be tricky for portrait photography, because of almost unavoidable blown out areas, as is the case here. The use of bouncing sunlight, with a reflector, would probably have given better results.

The lovely plaza mayor of Pedraza. Comments welcome, please view

larger.

Lovely, but needs some (more) postprocessing: the dark areas have a green color cast,which is especially unnatural in the lower area of the lake and the reflection of the red mountain. Must have been great standing there!

Good composition & warm colors. The large version could have been just a bit sharper. I googled a bit for this Agfa camera. Is this large format? If so, I'm curious how much detail you can capture, could you upload a detail?

Thanks Ricardo & Peter. Peter: this was in the evening, 20.45 to be exact.

The exquisite patio of the Salamanca university. A composite of 5 portrait

HDR images. I missed a bit in the upper left, which I copied, flipped and

pasted from the upper right. Comments welcome, please view the large

version.

Composition could be better IMHO. The buildings are too much hidden behind walls/hedges/trees, and the foreground is too chaotic.

A gravestone up close, for instance, might have given a nice foreground element.

Might have been a nice photo, but it overprocessed: it seems oversharpened and the halo is too noticeable.

Lovely colors & detail. I think the composition could be improved a little bit with a tighter crop.

The tree is a nice foreground element, but a large part of the foreground has an uninteresting texture. It would seem to me that getting close to the grape trees would have given better photo opportunities.

Pedraza's Plaza Mayor in the warm evening sun (although it was very

cold). Comments welcome, please view the large version.

A small but lovely cloister in Segovia. The stretching of the outer parts -

most notably the iron window frame on the right is because this is a

composite of several photos. I preferred the 'planar' projection that can

cause this stretching, but it keeps straight lines straight, opposed to

spherical projection which curves straight lines. There was too little room to

capture this in one photo, even with my 10-22mm (with 1.6 crop factor

though). This is also HDR to capture the extreme contrast on this sunny

day.

Comments welcome, please view the large version.

I presume this is HDR. You should change the settings to avoid the too noticeable halo surrounding the church. In terms of composition it's too centered. Good detail though.

The lovely cloister of Las Duenas in Salamanca. In case you notice the not-

so-perfect symmetry: this is not a square but an irregular pentagon, with

one smaller side on the far right. HDR photo. Comments welcome, please

view the larger version.

Evening sun on the Plaza Mayor in the lovely village of Pedraza, in Segovia

province.

Comments welcome, please view larger, thanks for watching.

Especially if you ask the viewers to view this larger I don't quite understand why you have designed such a large border. It's quite stylish -you can imagine what it looks like hanging on the wall- but I would have preferred a bigger photo, with a small frame, if at all. Nice photo though.

Perhaps wait for better (warmer) light. And I think it's a bit too centered, a bit more landscape on the left would have been better IMHO. Exposure and detail are good though.

Late afternoon sun in the Lake district. Composite of 2 HDR images.

Comments welcome, please view larger.

I came here through a link from the forum discussion about 'HDR without the cartoon look'. Although this and your other photos don't have the cartoon look, their HDR origin is still too noticeable IMO. Colors are a bit too saturated, landscape is too bright and the sky too dark with too little contrast in it - the white edges of the clouds should pop out more. If you go for a spectacular image, ignore my remarks, but if you want realism, you should do some postprocessing and/or alter the tone-mapping settings.

In this telephoto the hills have an almost 'Himalayan' grandeur, where in fact

people of all ages can easily walk them, provided in winter you might need

cheap crampons for some of the steeper snowy parts. In the previous photo

in this folder ("Cat Bells & Derwent Water from Walla Crag") you can see

these hills in their context. Comments welcome, please view larger.

Castlerigg Stone Circle in the Lake District on a fine winter day. Comments

welcome, please view larger.

Afternoon sun in the Lake District. Comments welcome, please view larger.

A real vertical pano follows the same rules as a horizontal (well....as any photo for that matter): you should not have the feeling that you're looking at an arbitrarily chosen part (or slice, in case of pano's) of landscape, but at a self-contained composition. To be honest I think in landscape a vertical pano has not so much use, since landscape is mostly a horizontal 'thing'- hence the name horizon. I've only seen a few convincing vertical landscape pano's. I can imagine a succesful vertical pano with trees, for instance.

IMHO it's too centered, also the vignetting is rather extreme, not only it gets darker but near the sides there's a purpleish color cast.

I think I would have made more use of the tree behind the foremost tree: if you would have moved forward, the trees would be darker giving the image more contrast. I did some quick PS adjustment to show what I mean, hope you don't mind.