Old building

[JK6065]

Hi to all of you

I'm new to this forum and I see a lot of awsome shots on this forum. I'm already started with studying these wonderful tutorials on the site. I would like to hear what you could say about some pictures of mine, as words of experienced fotographers can be very useful.



I hope to make some progress in fotography by visiting this site and forum and especcially practise a lot

kind regards,

Jeroen

[Colin Southern]

Hi Jeroen

Fantastic to have you with us - and a very warm welcome to the CiC forums

I'm a bit short on time just at the moment, so I'll let others chip in with comments about your photos, but if there's anything we can do to help, be sure to let us know.

Also, if you get a chance, pop a reply onto the welcome thread (2) and tell us a bit about yourself!

[Dave Humphries]

Hi again Jeroen,

I have to say, it is an unusual subject for a first post, it does show the wide end of the lens to good effect, and I like the composition although I do wonder if it would be improved if the top corner of the nearest column were in shot rather than clipped off.

Exposure looks pretty good, did you do any post processing on this, or is it almost straight from the camera?

Kind regards,

[Yan Zhang]

Jeroen,

This is a nice picture. I especially like the texture detail of the front building. The only thing I feel is that the right corner sky is over exposed which let my eyes tend to move there. Maybe a hand held ND grad would help.

[ajith.rajeswari]

Hi Jeroen,
Nice shot but I would have avoided cutting the top of the left tower, any thoughts?

~Ajith

[JK6065]

Thanks for your useful comments,

I think I'll go to the same location this weekend to try to take a better picture of the same building, if this stupid rain stops .
I'll see if I can reduce the exposure of the sky like you said Yan Zhang, does anybody have some tips to do this. I can't adjust the aperture on my camera as far as I know, though the shutter speed and ISO are adjustable. Besides that there are a lot of 'scenery' pre-settings which you can use.

Dave, the picture is almost straight from the camera. I only tweaked it a bit in Photoshop CS2, especially to 'investigate' the picture and see what I could do to improve it just a little bit (whit help of your great tutorials). Just like photography I'm also just started using photoshop. Most of the time the best thing for me to do is keeping the ammount of changes very small because I am not yet able to ajust it the way I want it to. As always practise is the key.

Yan Zhang, could you provide me with some more information about those ND grads? Google helps but I don't know know exactely where to go for proper information and maybe buying. I don't know exactely how it works and what it can do and if it will work with my CDC.

kind regards,

Jeroen

[Davey]

The way I'd do the sky might help. First take image the way you did and then a second shot to get the sky without clipping. You camera might have a histogram and metering on it which will help. To help on that we'd need to know the camera you have. Basically you already know no doubt the lowest iso is best for this, and a shorter shutter than what you used. This will mean capturing the sky detail but everything else will be too dark hence you need 2 exposures.

Then you just manually combine the sky in pshop. Easy way is select tools/path/local colour selection to mask off the sky (I'll assume you know how but say if don't) and add to the other image. Blending mode for the layer, opacity etc until it is to your taste.

Alternately for simple sky or different to actual sky just cheat and make one. The first method is ideal for complex cloud and sunset compositions where there is no way to capture both sky / land in one nicely hence combining is necessary evil (unless I've missed something which is possible so I'm open to better ideas). For simple ones just mask off the sky (easy as can be with a blown sky) and add a gradient (using pshop gradient tool) of your choice/making and mess with layer blending, opacity, dodge/burn/sponge and vibrance etc until you get it the way you want. I've done this on a few images where I needed to use someone elses photo for something and the sky was blown (and I HAD to use that photo and no way i could get there or those conditions to take myself), just made new one. For instance on your image a quick edit (I'm sure you can do much better if take time) I masked off in few clicks, added blue/yellow gradient in new layer, turned opacity down and vibrancy down, flattened and saved (I admit it's a bit blue but illustrates my point).



You can always add a total lie of a sky too like a sunset colour and then reverse selection and subtle photofilter to make it look natural. I did this to my house once because it's always overcast in north UK, ALWAYS hehehe. So I took photo on nice bright overcast day (waiting for that 30min window in the year when we actually get nice sun wasn't option ). I deliberately blew the sky out, added slight blurry hint of clouds and add some subtle luminance noise and it looked real but house stood out as it wasn't lit by that sky so a few subtle photo filters later to bring out the red/range and it looked natural. No one was the wiser. Not one for the purists I admit it's complete lying but so is a lot of in camera stuff (like long exposure) and does it really matter if it turns out the way you intend?

[Colin Southern]

You can always add a total lie of a sky ...

Is this what they mean when they refer to the "lie of the land" in photography circles!

[Davey]

[sigh] I don't know what's worse the bad pun or the fact it made me smirk hehehe

[JK6065]

Thank you all for your useful comments.

I didn't take the time to improve my photo until today beacause I wase quite bussy.
As you guys said I took a new photo and did not cut of the left tower. I also took care of the over exposed sky. I hope it is a real improvement. Comments are welcome as always

[Hansm]

To my opinion it's an improvement from your first picture.
As you notice, some small details can improve a picture a lot.

B.t.w. where is this building located?

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Jeroen,

Good to see you back again and thanks for posting the reshot picture, this is a definite (big) improvement in composition, not only on the near column, but the far one too.

The exposure being that bit less has made it look a little flat, you might want to try the trick I have just seen Geoff_F suggest for three of a kind, namely some UnSharp Mask (USM) with values around 20% (Amount), 50 pixels (Radius) and 0 Threshold. This should give a bit more "bite" to the white paint on the brickwork, just watch it doesn't 'overexpose' the sky again though. If so, and you're really keen, you could do this in a different layer in CS2 and paint it in for just the wall area.

Well done,

[crisscross]

how nice to see a new member starting off by posting a pic, welcome Jeroen

not going to say much as its not my type of shot, but agree 2nd go an improvement on 1st

[ajith.rajeswari]

this time it is better ..good work..

[JK6065]

Thank you for your comments.

To my opinion it's an improvement from your first picture.
As you notice, some small details can improve a picture a lot.

B.t.w. where is this building located?

This building is located in a village in the south of the Netherlands. Just a house between several older building in that street.

The exposure being that bit less has made it look a little flat, you might want to try the trick I have just seen Geoff_F suggest for three of a kind, namely some UnSharp Mask (USM) with values around 20% (Amount), 50 pixels (Radius) and 0 Threshold. This should give a bit more "bite" to the white paint on the brickwork, just watch it doesn't 'overexpose' the sky again though. If so, and you're really keen, you could do this in a different layer in CS2 and paint it in for just the wall area.

Thank you for your tip. It indeed made the wite paint look a bit nicer. I'll try some other things aswell but I really like it already. Thanks for all your tips and comments.