My first B&W...help

[d1a1s1]

Whats wrong with these?

 

[Mohain]

First one one could do with a touch more contrast and the composition seems a little clumsy. Second one is much better, good contrast and nice bold shapes but again the composition lets it's down a touch I feel.

 

[The_Traveler]

In re: the first one.
Looking at the histogram of the picture, you can see that the tones are poorly distributed. The peak at the right is the sky and the peak at the left is the bridge structure. Essentially, the bridge is well underexposed because the brightness of the sky has affected your camera meter.

That peak representing the bridge should cover much more of the histogram, thus representing many more tone values.

Because there are very few different tones (and the jpg is pretty low-res) in the bridge as it is posted here, any effort to correct it using curves and levels will probably not come out well. Correcting the larger original may be more effective.

In the camera, you need to expose for the important parts of your image. When you photograph a dark structure against a much brighter sky (like this) and you expose to get detail in the bridge, the sky will inevitably get washed out. Try exposures at either end of the day for lower, glancing light that will define the understructure, yet the sky is not so bright.

I hope this is of some use.

This might be a good time to try (using a tripod), separate exposures for the sky and understructure that can then be merges for the final print.

 

[d1a1s1]

^^^very helpful. Thanks traveler. Also, thank you Mohain...youre absolutely right, the composition is rather clumsy. I had an idea of what I wanted but my results didnt match.