Post-processing suggestions?

[mikelygee]

I'm pretty pleased with this image, but think it could be improved--I'm just not sure how. Suggestions?

[dubaiphil]

A little correction of the vertical perspective distortion may help. If you're using Photoshop then select the image, choose edit and distort, pull the top corners out a little on each side until your verticals are vertical, then pull the bottom of the image down to correct the 'squashing' of the buildings which the first part will cause. You've got enough spare space at the bottom of the image to do this, and it will partially get rid of the missing tile on the ground in the foreground and the clipped building on the left.

I'd also be tempted to brush out the branches on the left as well

[John 2]

Ireally like the way that the shadows provide a lead to the main subject. IMHO, you don't need the two lamp posts on the RHS and you could lose them and make it into a long, thin comp but that's not a problem, just a different approach. Ditto the leaning verticals. Where there is a slight problem is in the fact that there is a blue cast to the overall image. Desaturating the blues slightly will cure that.

[Manfred M]

I would do the same thing as Phil suggests, to get rid of that look where the lamp standards and buildings look like they are about to come crashing down. The issue you will find is that as you remove that effect, the composition of your image will change and it may not be as effective (you will move parts of it out of frame and will have to recrop the shot). Everything will look bit squashed as well and you will have to stretch it out to regain the right perspective.

Ditto with the blue cast, and it looks a touch underexposed to me as well, so I would tend to brighten it up a bit as well.

[Brev00]

You can look at this image with an eye to improve it but you could also take it as an opportunity to learn for the next time you have a similar opportunity. In this case, you may want to correct the keystoning distortion you got from pointing your camera up at the sculpture as has been suggested. In the future, if you take a few steps back and get a level shot, you will be left simply to crop in post rather than correct distortion. Alternatively, if you want distortion, you can get closer and point up even more.

Having poles as a side element in a pic is usually to be avoided if possible. I mean, I find if the composition is about the poles, that is fine, but if one wants to emphasize another subject, such poles can be distracting. I would at least straighten them to minimize the distraction.

Finally, shooting a backlit subject raises some issues mainly in terms of underexposure. I think I like the overall blue tones in this image but they are probably darker than in reality. Shadows will create a blue tint that has been mentioned. Warming the white balance can help (if you shot raw) but that will alter the hue of the sky. With such backlighting, you have a few options. You can maintain the underexposed take that you got. You can exaggerate the underexposure and create silhouettes. Or, you can raise the brightness and/or lift shadows to create a more even toned image---sort of like an HDR. Lifting shadows has some drawbacks, though--gaining noise and losing contrast chief among them. It an reveal some ugly stuff in the shadows. Because of the poles, I probably would think hard before putting too much effort into the pic. You decide the upward limits of a pic and do the pp that is appropriate.

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[NorthernFocus]

Welcome to CIC,... Mike?(putting your name in profile or signature would be nice). There have been a lot of good suggestions already. So I'll take a different approach.

Photography is sometimes described as "the art of exclusion". The point being one has to figure out how to eliminate things from a scene that don't contribute to "the story". The challenge that we all have as photographers is that our minds do that exclusion for us but the camera captures the whole scene. Then when someone else views the image they see all the other stuff that your mind is ignoring because you're focused on the primary subject. So you have to ask yourself what it is that you like about the image. Which object(s) is/are the primary subject(s). Then in future, either in the field or via post processing, try to eliminate or minimize anything else in the frame.

[DanK]

I second what Alaska Dan wrote. One of the most difficult things, particularly in urban scenes, is to find a way to get rid of what you don't want. Sometimes you can do it by position. Sometimes you can do it by using a narrow depth of field to blur what you don't want. Sometimes you can do it in postprocessing. Unfortunately, sometimes, I find I can't do it at all, without more processing than I want. Near where I work, there is a gorgeous, curved row of old London plane trees. I've never managed to get a shot I like because the area is cluttered with parking signs, telephone poles, and other stuff.

In this case, there are a bunch of things in the frame that draw the eye (my eye, anyway) away from the subject. The most problematic is the building.

[mikelygee]

Thanks for your suggestions. I'm using the GIMP; it sounds like it's time to start playing with lens corrections when I import the RAW file.

How would you "brush out" the branches?

[mikelygee]

Thanks for your comments. I need to learn to pay attention to the full frame, though there probably wasn't much I could do about the poles, if I wanted to keep the sun behind the chalice, and keep the shadows in the foreground.

[NorthernFocus]

...sometimes, I find I can't do it at all...

That's another thing we all have to learn.

[Richard Lundberg]

[QUOTE=mikelygee;414427]I'm pretty pleased with this image, but think it could be improved--I'm just not sure how. Suggestions?

I've tried to give up commenting on images uploaded to this forum because they are degraded by the process too much, but I wonder if you could explain the impression you wished to create. It's off vertical, has a blue cast, and the two boxes or whatever they are at the right in the cone's shadow should be cloned out. Perspective is up to the auteur, I guess. I get a feeling of asymmetry as well, not necessarily a bad thing. Some experimenting with removing distractions besides the two boxes might work.

[NorthernFocus]

I've tried to give up commenting on images uploaded to this forum because they are degraded by the process too much...

Maybe it's just me but I don't understand this statement, Richard. Are you saying the images are degraded or your comments are degraded?

[Richard Lundberg]

Yes it's just you.
The image is a bit underexposed and needs a white balance. I got rid of most of the blue cast by temperature adjust in a simple editor. It kind of meets the rule of thirds by the base of the nearest building. It's really just too cluttered for art. The image itself is basically "save for web" at 1059x1599 and needs sharpening pretty bad.
Conceptually interesting, but it would take a lot of judicious and expert simplification to make it a showpiece. If it were mine I would keep it after straightening and prettying.

[DanK]

Yes it's just you.

Actually, not.