Roofs, old wharf, Bergen

[DanK]

C&C welcome

[Geoff F]

Nicely composed colourful jumble of roof lines etc.

[Shadowman]

Nicely done.

[Dave Humphries]

Interesting composition, but I feel the need to see a human down there at street level.

(never satisfied, eh?)

[Manfred M]

It definitely has that Scandinavian look...

[John 2]

Very colourful and very typical Dan. My only thought is that it's a bit busy.

[Dave Humphries]

Very colourful ~
My only thought is that it's a bit busy.

I agree, that does give us lots to look at - but also why I feel it would be helpful for the eyes to have a 'destination subject' that is different from the majority of the scene. Most commonly this is satisfied by a 'human interest' element, but it doesn't have to be; e.g. there is a bird in the shot, but it's not in a suitable place compositionally and tonally, it merges in to some other clutter up there.

[mugge]

I love it - busy? Maybe. I spot with my little eyes several pictures here - some suitable candidates for B&W. I think you could have a lot of fun with this picture. That is only my opinion.
Cheers Ole

[DanK]

Thanks for the comments.

Dave, I have a series of photos of this area (the Bryggen), and most have people in them because it is a popular tourist area. This one did as well. While I take your point in general, none of the people are doing anything interesting, so they wouldn't serve as a focus of interest. In fact, before I cropped the bottom off this photo, I cloned out two people at the bottom. They appeared to me to be a distraction. So I ended up making this just patterns. I haven't figured out what to do with the rest of them.

Dan

[Mike Buckley]

My kind of image! Just lovely! Not at all too busy and no need for people; the red siding on the right side is perfectly positioned and has just the right tonality to properly anchor the image. The image would also make an effective monochrome but you would lose the cultural information provided by the colors.

Consider applying a dehaze tool to the trees in the background.

[DanK]

Mike,

Thanks for the feedback and suggestion. We had bad weather much of the time we were in Norway, and cloudy and rainy weather is very common in Bergen specifically at this time of year. I just started working on the photos, and I'm getting a lot of experience with LR's dehaze tool. I've reached the conclusion that it is worth applying it early in the process because otherwise I end up going back and re-doing the tonality, clarity, and vibrance adjustments. In addition, because it seems to boost saturation, I end up doing the contrast adjustment in some images using a curves too set to luminosity blending (in PP) to avoid boosting saturation yet more.

Dan

[Mike Buckley]

I have just enough experience, Dan, using the dehaze tool to appreciate some of the details you mention but not all of them. Even so, your comment about workflow definitely holds true also for me. Dehazing is probably the only local adjustment that I would strongly consider making before any of the global adjustments.

Try using the dehaze tool very slightly as a global adjustment. You might like the effect. I even did that once when I was post-processing a studio shot that most definitely had no haze.

[Dave A]

Really wonderful image.

Dave

[Donald]

Line, shape, tone and texture ..... and colour. Wonderful image.

[Wavelength]

Excellent shot!!!

[FootLoose]

Great image, Dan.

[DanK]

Thanks, all.

[rpcrowe]

Lovely, pleasant image. I love the jumble of colors...

[ccphoto]

Perhaps a square crop and make it more of a vivid abstract. Personally, I like shots like this sans people.

[Milehighguy]

Great picture!!! (I do support the suggested, tighter crop shot per above, sans people.) I was in Bergen a couple of years ago and walked down some of these old alleys with my camera. You saw this and it is really interesting and captures the place. One of my favorite photographic teachers (video course), Joel Santore, says that good, interesting pictures are made by seeing the ordinary in non-ordinary, creative ways using good composition. This does a good job of it.