And there shall be progress?

[mugge]

I have walked past this scene many times without really noticing the marked difference in architecture. C & C most welcome.

[royent]

I find this a problem in all towns and cities today. The old and the new clash ( to me anyway ) neither compliments the other
Roy

[Rufus]

A stark contrast indeed. The church almost looks like a temporary installation by an artist or a model placed in front of a modern city-scape. None of which is meant to denigrate the church in any way or the area it is in.

[pschlute]

How old is the old ?

[Geoff F]

Trying to avoid getting into town planning issues and just looking at the photographic merits of this scene. For me, there needs to be just a fraction more space at the top, between the top of those 'spires' and the image edge. It looks a fraction 'cramped' at the moment. Just a little bit more would have made so much difference to the overall scene.

And as a compromise, I would have been willing to lose that puddle in the bottom left corner.

One other very slight point is the post in the bottom left corner which is very close to the edge. Ideally, I would have preferred to either have a tiny bit more space between the post and frame edge or crop away the post altogether.

Otherwise, focus and exposure look good to me.

[Manfred M]

Ole's my initial shots are more or less in line with what Geoff has written. The top edge of the shot looks cramped and the bottom has a lot of material that really does not contribute a lot to the image.

Your approach in this image is almost the complete opposite of how I would have looked at the scene and tried to capture it. The church takes up most of the real estate in the shot and the high rise towers just fill up the background. I suspect that this might have been a more effective image had you shot in a portrait / vertical orientation and the buildings in the background had more presence.

[Shadowman]

I would've cut out most of that foreground and had more of the new architecture showing but nicely seen and captured.

[Cogito]

C&C? Perhaps the white could be toned down a bit? As far as criticism the actual input is a real comparison of architectural styles and as such is a realisation of the world we live in..... I don't think that criticism of crop etc. is really necessary. here's one that I took 10+ years ago!

[mugge]

I think a 16:9 ratio is better.

[mugge]

My mistake.

[Wavelength]

I feel the foreground is very much needed for ; i feel a discomfort without that...Further a Church's architecture would differ from that of other business constructions around;so it is not a matter of time but that of style

[DanK]

I think this is a very interesting shot. I wouldn't crop off the foreground, other than the puddle at the left, because doing so makes it seem cramped. however, I would clone out distracting details, such as pieces of trash and reflections. I did some of that in the image below, but I didn't finish. I think the image is a bit lacking in contrast. Moreover, part of what makes it interesting is the alignment of the vertical lines in the church and the modern buildings behind it, so I would use contrast and sharpening to highlight those.

I do agree that it is too tight at the top, but there is nothing to be done about that.

To get the image below, I raised the black point, imposed a fairly severe curve at the lower end of the histogram, cropped a bit, cloned a bit, and imposed a 1 px high pass filter for sharpening, opacity 66%. I tend to use a high-pass filter for sharpening in cases like this because if done well, it sharpens the lines--the regions of very high contrast--and leaves the rest unaltered.

[mugge]

Dan, your crop is better then mine, it was cramped. I use high-pass filter, especially in architectural photography. I shall go back to this scene again for I really want a picture out of it
Cheers Ole