Harnham village church, Salisbury, England.

[LouiseTopp]

This is Harnham church in a small village near Salisbury. Apparently the building dates from the 13th century.





This is the path that goes down to Harnham village from Salisbury.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Louise,

One thing I have learnt the hard way is that when shooting subjects like this always be generous with the framing, since this allows perspective correction to be more easily applied in Post Processing (e.g. without cropping important bits off the subject).

I note you shot at 18mm, probably as wide as the lens would go, so the 'fall back' is to step back (if possible) and shoot from further back - you may be surprised how little is needed to make the difference.


Ideally, I try to avoid the need for any, or too much, PP perspective correction by shooting with the camera as level as possible (i.e. not pointing up at all/too much), then just crop off any boring foreground in PP.


Processing wise, I find the first shot way too colourful, it may also be over-exposed - and, as mentioned, I'd correct the verticals to reduce the amount of 'leaning back' we see here.

I like the mono conversion, but again, the amount of perspective distortion on church, lamp post and houses behind is too much for my taste. I also wonder if you need all the right hand side, I appreciate you probably have it for the clouds/sky, but I'm not sure the extra is worth it.

The 'path shot' is my favourite; you have caught it at the perfect time (sun angle), I love that bold gate shadow on the path and how it 'joins' to the actual gate itself.

I hope those thoughts help, and I particularly hope you don't consider my suggestions on the first two as being overly negative (too unkind) - hopefully you have been here long enough to know my intentions are always constructive in nature.

All the best, Dave

[Manfred M]

+1 to Dave's comments.

Distortion correction is fairly easy in PP, so long as you leave enough space around the image so the material you loose can be thrown away, and one needs it on all sides. The buildings tend to look a bit squished after straightening, so they need to be stretched out a bit.

The other alternative is expensive, and that is to get a perspective correcting lens, but these are quite pricey, are manual. fixed focal length and won't fit on smaller camera bodies (the controls bang into the penta-prism / penta-mirror housing).

[bnnrcn]

Hi Louise The comments about the perspective correction have already been made. So, I just want to say that I prefer the composition of #1 to #2 and I think #1 would also look nice in B&W. I like everything in #3.

[Shadowman]

Nice series, I like the first image as the color really brings out the depth and style of the architecture.