C&C: Pond at blue hour

[Compaq]

This is one of the ponds at Campus.

Taken with 40D and tokina 11-16mm/2.8. Tonemapped in Photomatix and edited slightly in PS.

I'm very unsure about the crop. It's more squarish than I'd like, but decided I had to do it this way to keep the trees in upper left and at the same time make the pathway start in the lower right corner.

The little house in the middle, there, is the "duck house", owned by one of the student unions. It's a continuous struggle for them to keep the house in their colours, red and white, as other student unions will come and paint it in their colours at night and stuff.

Enough chat, here's the pic:


Andedammen 2 by Anders Myhre Brakestad, on Flickr


Thanks for commenting!

 

[CMfromIL]

I like the concept. Unsure of the execution. Seems to be a bit 'slanted' and that is distracting. I really like the lights and colors, particularly the reflection off the pond. But the more I look at it, the more I'm disliking the angle.

Perhaps if you straighten it a bit in photoshop?

 

[Compaq]

I hear you! I too feel it's tilted, but I wasn't sure. I'm not sure how I feel about it either, that's why I posted it for C&C

Thank you for opinions! I'll straighten it and post it again later tonight.

 

[spacefuzz]

I agree that if you fix the slant i like all the other elements.

If the house is important to the image though, it doesnt strike me as the subject. More the grass and reflected light on the pond.

 

[Skhigh]

Yup, the slant is distracting but the colors are AMAZING!!

 

[cgipson1]

based on the vertical trees.. it is not tilted much if any! It is more perspective...

Interesting, moody shot! I think it is a bit oversaturated, but I do like it...

 

[Compaq]

I agree that if you fix the slant i like all the other elements.

If the house is important to the image though, it doesnt strike me as the subject. More the grass and reflected light on the pond.

Not, not the subject, just an element. I just gave some (boring) background information about it, as I find it pretty amusing

Yup, the trees is what made me question the tilt as well. Many trees there grow in weird directions. Either way, I'm not perfectly happy with it. Just not liking the crop. Maybe I'll have to revisit some day.

Thanks for commenting!

 

[Trever1t]

I give it 2 :thumbup: up for color and clarity. Processing looks pretty nice, made it pop where pop was needed.

 

[fenderjaguar]

To me it's the big tree to the right that gives it the feel of being tilted. It may not be... It may just be an illusion but it's that tree on the right that gives me that impression. I would tilt the image to try and get that tree on the right straighter just to see what happens.

 

[vipgraphx]

Love the mood and colors...perfecto for me. The slant is kinda distracting. Have you tried the perspective transform tool?


I used it on the left side and then did some spot healing and cloning in the tree on the right side.

 

[Compaq]

Viagrapix (I always read your name like that LOL!), your until made wonders, imo. Definitely looks better to me. Some weird cloning in the trees, but I really need to straighten my own picture!

 

[vipgraphx]

Yeah if you take the time to spot heal and clone in the trees you could do a great job. This was just a few seconds of editing. The new feature in ps cs6 with the content aware select area tool would be a dream for working on that tree.

 

[Joel_W]

Overall, I really like the composition, and the saturated colors. It just works for me. Like just about everyone else, there seems to be a tilt issue, but it's hard to really determine. Since the vast majority of the trees are on a hill, they're not going to grow perfectly vertical. So I looked for things that should be level or vertical. The stone coping around the pond are man made, so they should be level, and they are once you get past the 1st 1/3 of the photograph. The Pine trees to the far right look like they're on basically level ground, and are just about vertical. So, for all practical purposes, I'd venture to say that there isn't a tilt issue. Rather a misconception issue on our part.

 

[Buckster]

When it comes to determining tilt of an image, water makes it really easy to figure out because of the reflections, which are ALWAYS exactly vertically aligned with whatever they're reflecting. Choose something near the horizontal center of the photo if possible, zoom in so that the object and it's reflection fill the screen vertically, then use the ruler tool to line them up and straighten. Anything to the right or left of center that still tilt are due to lens barreling, and should be adjusted using the proper tool for that.