C&C for class project

[Josh220]

If you could provide any C&C that would be great. I need to turn in one of these images as my final piece for a project.

They were shot with a Nikon 12-24 lens, and slightly modified in Light Room. I didn't do very much editing, but I made a few small tweaks. I just got CS4 but I haven't worked on them yet because I am still unfamiliar with it.

1.

2.

3.

4.

 

[Peanuts]

4! I love the detail in the sky, the colours. yup. Definitely 4

 

[chammer]

oh man! 2 and 4 are brilliant!

 

[Ernie83Metal]

i love the sky in number 2... but 4 is awesome as well... nice photos though C;

 

[Samanax]

I think #2 and #4 are stronger than #1 and #3, mostly because of where the horizon line is in those images. Great colors in the sky!

 

[existence02]

2 and 4 are definitely the strongest out of the set.

1 and 3 the horizons being dead center of the frame isn't really the best placement and I feel like my eyes are being pulled in two different directions in the first one. I want to follow the pier and look at the sky at the same time.

I want to say the #2 is the best of the lot because I love the sky, but I simply can't because #4 is a brilliant shot. The sky, the pier, the reflection in the water I love all of it. I might be tempted to pull it into PS and use the dodge and burn tools to bring out more shadows and highlights here and there, but it's quite a wonderful shot just as it is.

 

[Randall Ellis]

#1 has too many areas that add nothing to the composition, hence distracting my eye from the main subject. It's actually difficult to tell the main subject here because the boardwalk carries a lot of weight, and so does the sky, so I'm torn between the two rather than being able to pick up on the features of one primary subject being supported by the rest.

#2 is very linear. My eye moves to the sunset right away and then roams side to side. The sky is the clear emphasis here, so I'd consider cropping out that spit of land at the very bottom as it pulls the eye into the bottom of the frame where there is nothing that adds to the composition.

#3 See comments on #1

#4 is my personal favorite. It has an oval movement that I find quite pleasing. My eye enters at the boardwalk, is led deep into the image on that leading line, then it flows across to the sunset. It is then pulled lightly back to the foreground by the reflection of the sunset and flows back down the leading line again. Great movement, good use of silhouette, good balance top to bottom and side to side. All around nice work I'd say...

- Randy

 

[Josh220]

Thanks guys!

Is there any editing I could still do to #4 that I'm missing? Or perhaps in CS4 that I don't know about yet?

 

[TJ K]

I think that you could bring the colors out a little bit more in the sky in 4 but not too much because you don't want it looking super fake.

 

[Josh220]

I removed the strip of land in the bottom of # 2 and did a few more tweaks in #4. I saturated a little bit of the clouds further out. I also cloned out some things that were bothering me such as the car headlights and the bird poop.

#2 re-edit:

#4 touched up

 

[Josh220]

Anyone else?

 

[Village Idiot]

USM. You'll need to layer it or else you'll get halos coming off of the ground. It's one of my favorite tricks for clouds and sometimes it works and other times it doesn't. Try it and see if it does anything for you.



It's small, but clicking on it goes to the flickr page. I didn't use layers so you can see the halo coming from the ground. I just hit it twice with really aggressive USM and adjusted to get the sharpness/contrast how I wanted it. It makes for some really wild clouds.

Here's one I used a separate layer for the sky so I didn't get the halo effect and the sharpening on the ground.