Pedestrian Bridge

[Snarkbyte]

C&C for this shot is invited and much appreciated.

What I like (though you are welcome to disagree): The general composition, patterns and perspective

What I think might be improved: Remove the gray handrail? I cloned out some brass support rods holding the handrail as too distracting, but not sure about the handrail itself.. sometimes I like it, other times I think it's just too distracting. Also, the green shrubs should probably be removed.

As always, please comment on any and all aspects that you feel would improve the image, not just the stuff I mentioned. Thanks in advance.

EXIF: Canon 7D 100mm@f/22 1/30sec ISO100

[Shadowman]

Leave the rail, convert to black and white if it looks offsetting. I agree with the use of patterns and you could probably lose some of the sky by zooming in a bit.

[jiro]

I agree. This would work well in B&W. I'd say... go for it.

[Snarkbyte]

Oops! Just noticed some power lines visible that I intended to clone out... I removed them from the left side of the image (past the bridge, but forgot about the parts visible between the bridge sections. Obviously an oversight on my part.

[Donald]

I was going to ask what you thought it would look like if you were to crop it on the right to just at the point where the top of the bridge intersects the top of the frame. In other words, the point at which the top of the bridge goes out of the top of the frame would be the top right-hand corner of the picture. I wondered if that would be a good idea. But that would make it into more a of portrait format and I'm not sure that would work.

Another thought is what would it look like at a 1:1 (square) ratio, retaining the left-hand edge. That would get the bi-section of bridge and top of frame right into the top right-hand corner, but it would be closer. Or you could crop it to 1:1 to get that top right hand corner bi-section. Or you could ignore all of the above as nonsense!

[jiro]

Oops! Just noticed some power lines visible that I intended to clone out... I removed them from the left side of the image (past the bridge, but forgot about the parts visible between the bridge sections. Obviously an oversight on my part.

Yup, noticed that, too.

[Snarkbyte]

OK, here are the results so far:

I tried cropping the image in the manners suggested by John and Donald, but I didn't like the results much. The problem is that cropping at the end of bridge (to decrease the sky content) deletes enough of the bridge that curvature of the main arch is essentially lost. Cropping on the other end (at the near part of the bridge) leaves too much sky. I finally decided to flip the image horizontally, so that the eye scans from left-to-right, and tends to follow the arch, reducing the prominence of the negative space.

I removed some additional clutter (shubbery, and the power lines I neglected earlier) and converted to B&W. The result looks rather flat to me, but I'm a complete newbie, and this is my first attempt at B&W. I tried playing around with the curves adjustment, but I have no idea of what I'm doing... some things just require practice, I suppose. I welcome any further suggestions on how to improve the B&W image. Surely there must be some effective (and probably simple) way to increase the tonal range so the image just isn't so dull.

Thanks to everyone for the feedback... your help really is valuable and appreciated.