Freedom Tower Today

[JohnSmith1990]

Took this today on break near my office in Jersey City.

Shot with my new D700 (f/4.4, 1/2000, 100ISO @ 57mm).

I'm new to photography (just got my first DSLR last week) and would love any feedback.

Thanks!



larger size

[dje]

Hi Aaron and welcome to CiC. That's quite a nice image for your first post. Could I suggest the following

The image looks a bit flat to me. If you look at the histogram you will see that there's not much at the top end. You can correct for this by opening up the Levels Adjustment and sliding the white level slider down to about 200 in this case. And then adjust the contrast by sliding the mid-tone slider to the right to about 0.9.

I would also suggest you increase the colour saturation a reasonable amount.

These adjustments will give the image more pop. You could also add some sharpening.

Finally I'm not sure about those poles in the water in the foreground - whether they enhance the image or detract from it. It's your call of course.

Dave

[Polar01]

Aaron: like the composition of the image especially the reflection in the one tower on the right. As you are new, a few points to think on: 1) low depth of field more up to f8 or f9 to get a greater depth of field, 2) as result need more exposure now 1/1000 sec or slower ( with practice you can learn to hand hold down to at least 1/80 sec for basic non moving images), 3) at 57 mm you are using a zoom and by the looks of it (upper corners) a long hood loose the hood or a smaller hood at wider angles. For a first post and a new shooter not bad now go and reshoot today at break with those changes and see if it improves and then repost new images.

Cheers:

Allan

[JohnSmith1990]

Thank you Dave and Allan for the warm welcome and critiques.

I went out today and reshot / edited with your comments in mind.

I modified the composition slightly to have more of a pattern with the columns on the bottom.

f9, 1/250, 100ISO, 42mm

Played with the levels and saturation in photoshop. I also toned down the vignetting a bit.

I think these changes produced a much improvement. The image definitely pops more and the extra f stops provide more contrast and sharpness on the buildings.

One critique I have is the sky behind the buildings looks a little washed out. Couldn't quite get that looking clear without throwing the rest of the image off? Any thoughts on this? I could play with masking some adjustment layers in photoshop potentially...

Thanks again for the feedback!

Aaron

[Mark von Kanel]

much better! well done, next time , try to time it without the boat (i find it distracting) and crop out the pier on the middle right... fussy buggers arnt we!!

[JohnSmith1990]

Mark,

Thanks for the reply.

Here's different one, same settings and post production, slightly different composition / zoom (50mm).

I also got rid of a boat that was on the horizon, can you spot where it was?

Thanks again for the feedback.

Aaron

[Polar01]

Aaron nice reshoot, I myself like the first reshoot than the last one. This is just me, there are somw piers on the right side I would crop everything off below themm keeping a thin streak of water with the boat on it. This would give the final image more of a square format. Yes about the sky the only way would be through layers and masks, masking out te skyline and everthing below then work on the sky itself. Another way would be to open the image from raw as a smart layer, then copy by way of a smart layer, apply the mask to the second layer, then open the rae file as now you get to use all the raw sliders to work the sky as the maske will cover the skyline. All that said if you can not open as a smart layer forget what I just wrote.

Cheers:

Allan