Your opinion please

[Abitconfused]

I used Photoshop CS6 RAW and Adjustment Layers to create this black & white, emphasize texture and slightly over sharpen.

Opinions please. (PS, I am not sensitive).

[pnodrog]

It would be interesting to see it with the sky and other whites reduced to light greys apart from the white on the hat sign. I assume this should not be to hard for a man of your abilities.

[Adrian]

I am not sure as a viewer what you are trying to achieve with the picture compositionally. The hat is quite central and it is hard to get beyond that as a result. The column on the left is distracting. For me the picture is not interesting enough to make me want to try to work out what story the photographer had in his mind, so I would simply pass it by normally. I would like a different angle or crop to draw me in more. If you are looking for graininess or over-sharpening to add to the sense of urban decay, you could push it much further.

[Geoff F]

OK, I suppose, plenty of different elements, textures, shapes, materials etc. But does the top right corner seem a bit bland and lacking in interest at the moment.

Maybe a bit darker in that corner or I wonder if a suitable border would hold everything together a bit better?

[Abitconfused]

Thank you. Revised image:

[pnodrog]

I think your new version is better and looks a little bit more cohesive. But the highlight down the left hand edge would be better cropped or cloned out.

[Geoff F]

Yes, edge of the window on far left side. Crop a fraction tighter, or wider, or clone it. Otherwise, much better.

[Abitconfused]

Yes, I see the truth of it!

[dan marchant]

Sorry to say I'm finding it a bit difficult to comment on because I can't really see what the intention is with the image. It has many textures and materials but that, in itself, doesn't make a particularly interesting or pleasing image. They are just there. Any one of them alone might have made an interesting subject for a close-up/macro shot. Alternatively a shot through a fence of something else might have been interesting. As it is there is nothing (accept the sign) to attract the eye and, after that, nothing interesting to lead the eye around the scene. Compositionally this just appears to be a street without much of interest in it.

There is obvious something of interest to you there but I don't think you have analysed the scene properly to clearly identify it. In this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpHMuK7Htic Scott Kelby talks about how we often take a photo and then find it is disappointing, because we didn't clearly identify the subject and exclude all the unnecessary boring stuff. He calls it working the scene. I think maybe you should go back and have another go at working the scene.

[jcuknz]

With the tonal balance of dark on the left and bright on the right there is nothing to hold the eye from moving on to the next subject

Here the simple mirror of the image corrects this and encouranges the eye to stay on the picture. This is ART I assume not documentary. The angle of the building to the camera also seems to help as well.

[Abitconfused]

I watched the video but my small brain couldn't get it. Beauty, I suspect, is in the eye that beheld her.

[Brev00]

The image as you have edited through the course of this thread is improved in my eye. But, what cannot be corrected is the cropping of the front railing. The image seems to me to emphasize the lines and textures in an almost abstract way with the subject matter of urban decay as a theme. The barbed wire brings that idea home along with the deep shadows. The last pic you shared adds some emphasis to that. Sort of a brutally direct view of an ugly scene but trying to add some uplift to it. Since the lines are so important to this image, simply cropping some key lines at the edge of the frame seems unfortunate. Working the scene some more, as another has suggested, might give you a slight change of position, focal length, and angle. It doesn't have to be complicated. Take shots as you move about. Each shot should lead to a slightly different idea. There is no perfect image--just different directions.

[Abitconfused]

I think the idea of moving about is very important. Zoom lenses tend to make me lazy. I think I am accomplishing something when I zoom in or out but I am really fooling myself. To actually move and think is a better goal. "Look up, look down, look near and far...change position, gain a new perspective, work the controls...depth of field etc. Study background and foreground." All valuable suggestions. Now, if I can just remember them all.

[nimitzbenedicto]

Sorry to say I'm finding it a bit difficult to comment on because I can't really see what the intention is with the image. It has many textures and materials but that, in itself, doesn't make a particularly interesting or pleasing image. They are just there. Any one of them alone might have made an interesting subject for a close-up/macro shot. Alternatively a shot through a fence of something else might have been interesting. As it is there is nothing (accept the sign) to attract the eye and, after that, nothing interesting to lead the eye around the scene. Compositionally this just appears to be a street without much of interest in it.

Yes, I agree.

But Ed must've seen something interesting as far as he is concerned.

As they say "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder..........................."