Cemetery shot from today (please be as critical as possible)

[SergeTheBlerge]

There's a good amount where this came from. Did some quick tweaking with Photoscape to enhance the sharpness, colors, etc. Still not happy with it. Still trying to decide what type of photo editor I should buy. Was trying really hard to get a sunlight "ray" effect but it seemed no matter what I did it wouldn't come out in the shot.

[IMG][/IMG]

[Manfred M]

The "sunlight ray" effect requires some fairly special and specific conditions - particulate matter in the air or holes in the clouds + particulates (dust or water droplets) for this effect to show up. I don't see any signs of those in this image, so I'm not quite sure how you were hoping to achieve this effect.

In terms of the edit, I find you have pushed the saturation a bit too hard as the colours seem a bit over done.

Our eyes tend to be drawn to the brightest or most contrasty part of the scene and if that is not the subject, the image is not as strong as one would want. Here that is the open sky at the top of the image and the area of glare right beside the toy tractors. Crop of the top 20% of the image and I think that will help focus the viewer's eyes.

The other issue is the foreground - again the human visual system has no problems with the areas behind the subject (the toy tractors?) being out of focus, but will find out of focus areas in front of the subject to be distracting. The rocks in the front are definitely soft and distracting.

[TheBigE]

Sergio - I agree with Manfreds opinion about saturation and focus the viewer attention.

My question is more along the lines of subject matter? What are you trying to convey here? I am struggling to find the subject and the focus. I can tell there is a cemetery in the background...but the tractors in the foreground which are in focus makes it difficult to find the relationship?

Overall - for me something to tie it together compositionally is needed. Hope that helps.

[Shadowman]

Agree with other comments, lower angle does help somewhat. Nice effort.

[SergeTheBlerge]

The "sunlight ray" effect requires some fairly special and specific conditions - particulate matter in the air or holes in the clouds + particulates (dust or water droplets) for this effect to show up. I don't see any signs of those in this image, so I'm not quite sure how you were hoping to achieve this effect.

In terms of the edit, I find you have pushed the saturation a bit too hard as the colours seem a bit over done.

Our eyes tend to be drawn to the brightest or most contrasty part of the scene and if that is not the subject, the image is not as strong as one would want. Here that is the open sky at the top of the image and the area of glare right beside the toy tractors. Crop of the top 20% of the image and I think that will help focus the viewer's eyes.

The other issue is the foreground - again the human visual system has no problems with the areas behind the subject (the toy tractors?) being out of focus, but will find out of focus areas in front of the subject to be distracting. The rocks in the front are definitely soft and distracting.

Thanks, I do like the edit but not sure I prefer it. I was taking numerous shots of this, and in only 1 did I get a decent sun glare effect but didn't like the angle too much and it was hard to replicate.
What I was trying to convey here was the sun shining upon a grave that reflected childhood, and show a sense of peace and that though this person is deceased, their "spirit" still survives.
I do agree with the saturation and will try to use it minimally next time.

[Manfred M]

Thanks, I do like the edit but not sure I prefer it. I was taking numerous shots of this, and in only 1 did I get a decent sun glare effect but didn't like the angle too much and it was hard to replicate.
What I was trying to convey here was the sun shining upon a grave that reflected childhood, and show a sense of peace and that though this person is deceased, their "spirit" still survives.
I do agree with the saturation and will try to use it minimally next time.

Sergio - I will often go out with a particular shooting vision, but when the conditions conspire against me, I do not stick with a vision that is not going to work on a compostional or technical basis. I will switch to an approach that will let me get the best image, even though it might not have been the image I started out to get.

In my view, getting a superior image is always preferable to getting one that has not worked out the way I had hoped it would.

What I did in this edit was to eliminate the elements in the shot that were not working for technical and /or compositional reasons.

[Mike Buckley]

Sergio - I will often go out with a particular shooting vision, but when the conditions conspire against me, I do not stick with a vision that is not going to work on a compostional or technical basis. I will switch to an approach that will let me get the best image, even though it might not have been the image I started out to get.

Exactly! If you want to use a round peg but you're presented only with a square hole, don't waste your time trying to force the issue.

[proseak]

You can add rays of light in post; you'll need a pixel editor that has layers for this.

New empty layer, quite a few white spots, radial blur set to zoom over the light source.