Anacortes WA

[klaesser]

 

[unpopular]

while technically adequate, there is an unsettling quality here I do not care for. Lots of conflicting angles, leaving me question if the horizon is straight; i'm inclined to say it is, but this doesn't matter much if my senses all say it's not.

 

[klaesser]

The horizon is perfectly straight

 

[Tim Tucker]

The horizon is perfectly straight

The main problem here is that people don't see it because they do not see the horizon. The reason for that is simply because you've changed it's value relative to the sky and clouds so much it is now brighter than the sky and clouds that surround it and anybody scanning the image will at first associate the area (centre-right above the mid-distance trees) with sky because the land would never be brighter. What the image actually is of is a ridge in front of the clouds, by increasing it's brightness what people actually see is clouds free floating in air, the mountain ridge disappears. You have a visual memory of the scene because you took it and have reference to the original un-edited version, others don't. What they see is just the curving line of trees.
I have to ask; can't you see how odd and unnatural this looks?
This is a very good example of why you shouldn't mess with the relative values within your image and how doing so can make visual mush of them.
With this image and especially the tower in the thread "Aloha" I find that I can't see any impression of the light in which they were shot, Your processing has removed this, especially in the tower that though it does contain some slightly diffuse shadows your processing makes it look a lot duller than it was. It is the subtle variations of brightness and contrast within an image that allow us to see things as sunlit areas or shadow. By tone mapping you effectively remove these differences and flatten the image. By adding global contrast and sharpening all you are doing is adding more black into an image, and adding black to colour lowers it's tint and makes it darker and duller in the same way adding white reduces saturation and creates a pastel shade.
With the image above if you cover the sky, the only visual indicator of a bright day, then the rest of the image looks like it was shot on a dull and overcast one.
Offered as helpful advice, and an insight into how others see and perceive the images only with no wish to offend.

 

[klaesser]

The horizon is perfectly straight

Oh drat, I guess all my chances of ever being a great professional photographer are gone now.

 

[Tim Tucker]

Oh drat, I guess all my chances of ever being a great professional photographer are gone now.

On the contrary, your chances have now increased beyond all proportion.

I do like your sense of composition.

 

[klaesser]

My age may hold me back a bit, I am 83

 

[Derrel]

This is the second time in less than ten days that Tim Tucker has given simply brilliant, accurate, on-point advice regarding landscape photography and the negative effects associated with excessive tone-mapping of images. As to the horizon...it's adequately level...and also, utterly just a smidge above utterly inconsequential to the image--the harbor is the real scene here. The pilings in the near ground area are perfectly straight...there's no need at all to mention a word about the horizon line. I have a feeling a number of people have absolutely no idea what the shoreline of the Strait of Juan de Fuca looks like, but I have grown so, so very tired of the people with the knee-jerk, OCD-level hangups over perceived horizon line "issues".