Some Advice On What I did Right Or Wrong

[rickabobaloey]

While I enjoy this picture, the colors don't really jump out, it's a little dull.

Plus I'm thinking there might be too much going on (steam ship, ducks, and fishing boat).

Any advice on what I could do differently next time I'm in the area that could really give this photo some "grab". Kinda feel like I had a golden oppurtunity to capture the S.S. Badger (only coal-fired steam ship in operation in North America), and missed it.

 

[tirediron]

Thoughts per req: I like this image, but you're right it is a little busy. My thoughts would be to crop our the foreground and the dock image right concentrating on the two large lakes and the loading facility, and if you're really ambitious, removing the little pleasure boat. As far as teh colour goes, I don't mind it as-is, however you might want to think about converting it to a B&W image and just negating the whole colour issue altogether.

 

[bazooka]

I agree with the B&W conversion. I also don't think the straight-on bow shot is really capturing the boat at it's best, or at least most descriptive. At this angle, to me at least, it could be any boat. I'd get a longer lens if you can't physically get closer to it, and find some different angles. To get rid of the extemporaneous crap that you don't have control over, you might try some non-standard crops.

 

[misstwinklytoes]

You might play with the contrast and saturation, but I think I would crop around the steam and fishing boats (those are my fav part of the image).

 

[Morpheuss]

there is alot going on. I probably would have taken this same photo and then zoomed in on the steam boats as one photo then the fishing boat as one photo and the ducks.

 

[rickabobaloey]

Thanks for the replies. I have a few more shots of it actually sailing out of the marina where it was docked, it went right by a little walkway I was on. I was actually at the beach and heard its foghorn going off and walked about 1 mile to try and get there in time. I'll look through which ones I think are the better ones.

Here's the image cropped and switched to B&W. This was my first time using image editing software (GIMP).

 

[Morpheuss]

that looks really nice in black and white

 

[rickabobaloey]

A little bit of a different crop, and played with the contrast/brightness a little bit.

And then here's one after the S.S. Badger set sail, where you can actually see the name on the side of the ship.

On that second photo I cropped out the front part of the ship! So here is a photo of it recropped.