House in St Ives

[LouiseTopp]

As I said i go to Cornwall a lot and hope to improve my shots. I found this little house in St Ives and thought I would take a shot (I hope the owner doesn't mind).



Will come up with more Cornish pictures. Please tell me what you think? Thanks.

[Shadowman]

Very nice, I'll bet that scene looks great any time of the day.

[LouiseTopp]

Must be a nightmare when it's flooded, lovely views through

[davidedric]

Hi Louise. It is a nice scene, but I think the composition could be improved. With the house in the middle of the scene, it really doesn't draw my eye. I would either crop from the bottom so that the house is in the bottom right corner, or if you want to keep the pretty shore line crop from the top, perhaps so that the sky just starts in the top right corner. What do you think.?

Looking closely, I also suspect that the horizon and the verticals are just a little off, clockwise. Hard to be sure though without downloading.


Dave

[dabhand]

Louise,

I'd go with Dave and crop some of the sky away - I believe the sea and coastal features are essential to the story behind the house and I'd hazard a guess that at one time it was either the boathouse for one of the landed gentry or a sailing / rowing club headquarters. One thing for certain given the tide mark, I wouldn't want to be in it if the sea was really up.

steve

[davidedric]

Hope you don't mind, but here is an idea of what I meant. I've also upped the exposure a bit, and done a couple of other tweaks. If you don't like others to change your images, just say, and I will remove it.

Dave

[TonyW]

This is a nice scene and I prefer the original version to this one. I would consider lightening the shadows because the trees look a little dark.

The composition worries me a little because the main features, namely the house and church, are so close to the edge. Is there more on the right that could be shown?

[DanK]

It's a nice scene, but I think the image could benefit from changes.

Dave is right about the sky. the fact that it was an overcast day exacerbates this. Roughly one third of the image is essentially featureless.

As a general rule (like all general rules in photography, this one is often wrong), it is not a good idea to center the point of maximum contrast or interest, e.g., horizon lines. There are many alternatives, but for one of the most common, google "rule of thirds."

There is limited tonal range in the photo, that is, range from dark to light. This makes the image less interesting, and it also obscures detail in the area of the cape. This is a common issue with images taken on overcast days, but it can be addressed in postprocessing.

Dave's comment about what draws his eye is a very helpful general idea about composition. If you see an interesting scene and just snap it, the odds are very high that the photo will be disappointing. Instead, you have to think about how the image will appear when reduced to a two-dimensional rectangle. Where do you want the eye to focus? Then you have to think how to make the eye go there. This can be with lines, with placement, with tonality, or with color, but you need something that will draw the eye.

[IzzieK]

What Tony said...

[davidedric]

I think the message is: try out various crops and see which you find the most pleasing.

The photo as posted by Louise is a rather small jpeg with a lot of unrecoverable shadow detail. Looking at it here, I do think I've probably over-processed it, but the intention was to suggest an idea, not provide a text book pp's image.

Dave

[Shadowman]

When I first viewed this scene, I also thought it could be cropped from the top but not so much. However, the more I look at it the dreary sky is a nice contrast to the warm colors of the within the coastline and cropping would kill that magnificent slopping coastline.

[Geoff F]

That is a dull day, Louise, so it is going to produce a dark image. The alternative of a little positive exposure compensation would brighten the foreground and houses but would lose the sky.

Taking a number of shots with different exposures then combining them would produce a form of HDR which would expand the range. But this is difficult to do without a tripod, particularly when there is movement within the scene.

There are a number of possible crops and I have tried a few. A 4 x 5 ratio shows the foreground and sufficient sky, but if my intended scene was chiefly for the houses I would crop 5 x 4 ratio and lose some of the foreground as well.

The horizon is a bit off but there is just sufficient space for a rotation before cropping.

Anyway here is my quick edit to add a little brightness but still producing a dull wintry look. A little bit of Local Contrast Enhancement would give it a little more 'pop' but I feared this would lose the 'dull day appearance'.



There is a spot amongst the clouds which looks as though you have a small bit of dirt on your camera sensor. I have removed it in this edit.

I also found something strange going on with this image. When I downloaded and opened your photo I got a warning about Pixel Ratio Correction is for preview purposes only. Turn off for maximum quality.

And when I tried to crop I was getting a wrong image size. Eventually I imported the file through ACR where everything worked OK. I have checked with some of my photos and everything works properly.

So I wonder if you have done something to change your image view or have distorted the image? I'm not sure what is going on here; it is something which I have never encountered before.

Perhaps somebody else can offer an explanation.

[LouiseTopp]

That is a dull day, Louise, so it is going to produce a dark image. The alternative of a little positive exposure compensation would brighten the foreground and houses but would lose the sky.

Taking a number of shots with different exposures then combining them would produce a form of HDR which would expand the range. But this is difficult to do without a tripod, particularly when there is movement within the scene.

There are a number of possible crops and I have tried a few. A 4 x 5 ratio shows the foreground and sufficient sky, but if my intended scene was chiefly for the houses I would crop 5 x 4 ratio and lose some of the foreground as well.

The horizon is a bit off but there is just sufficient space for a rotation before cropping.

Anyway here is my quick edit to add a little brightness but still producing a dull wintry look. A little bit of Local Contrast Enhancement would give it a little more 'pop' but I feared this would lose the 'dull day appearance'.



There is a spot amongst the clouds which looks as though you have a small bit of dirt on your camera sensor. I have removed it in this edit.

I also found something strange going on with this image. When I downloaded and opened your photo I got a warning about Pixel Ratio Correction is for preview purposes only. Turn off for maximum quality.

And when I tried to crop I was getting a wrong image size. Eventually I imported the file through ACR where everything worked OK. I have checked with some of my photos and everything works properly.

So I wonder if you have done something to change your image view or have distorted the image? I'm not sure what is going on here; it is something which I have never encountered before.

Perhaps somebody else can offer an explanation.

Hi thanks for that which I have marked as helpful. I went through a program called Picture monkey (which I will not be using again) it kept compressing my images making them useless for me to enlarge them to put them in display etc. I now use Fast Stone which is a lot better, anyone else use that?

[Geoff F]

That is probably part of the answer then, Louise, whatever Picture Monkey did to your photos was permanent even with other software, until I 'broke the link' by going through ACR.

There are a few members here using Fast Stone, as well as Gimp which has a good following. Before getting CS 5, I always used Serif Photo Plus for editing, which I found reasonable for a mid price programme.

At least until their version X4 which I couldn't really get along with; but I understand that they have changed a few things with the later versions.

[LouiseTopp]

What is ACR please?

[dabhand]

Adobe Camera Raw

steve

[Geoff F]

Or to be more precise, a separate but interlinked part of Adobe photo editing software which can be used to convert Raw images into a more universal format which can then be further edited with more general software. Usually the first stage of editing shots taken with one of the Raw formats.

And it can also be used, to some extent, for the first stage in editing images which are in a more 'universal' format.

Some of us always shoot in the Raw Format (actually there are many different forms of Raw files) because it gives a little more flexibility with editing compared with direct shot Jpegs which are often 'edited' in some form inside the camera when shot.

[Glenn NK]

Adobe Camera Raw

steve

It's available in CS (Creative Suite by Adobe - often called Photoshop) and Lightroom (also an Adobe product)

Leveling horizons are very easy to do in either; and once posted are easy to check by sliding the cursor bar until the horizon is at the top of the viewing screen (in CiC).

Dave and Geoff have both fixed the horizon in their reworkings - the original is out.

I agree about cropping the top (Dave and Dan K comments).