Not your average sunset

[dylanstraub]

I captured this shot at the local park yesterday. I did minimal PP including a slight crop and adjusted the saturation and hue down a bit. Exif data : F 3.2 1/250 ISO 400 Exposure Bias -.3 step. I was going for an almost monotone look. I'd like to hear what people think of this capture (the good and bad)

 

[Ron Evers]

Got a bit of lean to the right & it would look better if the sun was offset from centre.

 

[skieur]

Insufficient visual interest in this scene to grab a viewer's attention.

skieur

 

[orbit]

Im going to have to agree, its not a viewer grabbing picture. but i must say, there is something about it that intrigues me.

 

[Rocan]

its a good image, but it really leaves a lot up to the viewer as to whats going on. A ground in the image would be nice to break it up a bit more....

personally I would have brought the saturation up a bit on the orange and red colors, to really make it glow. reminds me a LOT of an image I had taken... I had actually forgotten to upload it to my flickr, so this reminded me to do it now...

Sunrise Over a Cold City by David Xerri, on Flickr

 

[dylanstraub]

Wow. I guess I've got to learn to shoot with the subject off center. I've heard that quite a bit recently. It did kind of grab my attention when I saw it. I agree that it's a bit dull though but that was the point of the shot.

 

[Rocan]

not necessarily. if you look at my image, the subject (the sun) is dead center... the rule of thirds works for it though as all lines point towards that center, not to mention the illusion of depth provided by the parallel lines appearing to meet at the center.

 

[dylanstraub]

There's no ground because you would have seen the fence at the park and I desaturated it specifically because the sun was way over exposed. Rocan's shot really draws me in because of the road and cars. I love that sort of perspective in a shot. Nice work. I guess there really wasn't much in my shot but I liked it specifically for that reason. Guess I'm kinda weird like that.

 

[Rocan]

dylan, i see what your going for. its definitely an artistic statement that weve all dabbled with at some point or another.

if you have the original raw id love to mess around with it and show you how i would have done my edit on it... just to give you an idea of what other people see. I DO like your image, quite a lot actually, but its like driving a ferrari without an engine... its just... empty, but the thought lingers that it could be something more.

 

[dylanstraub]

LOL I'm pretty sure this camera doesn't shoot raw and I just realized that this is the original. I was fooling with some pp on another copy of this but this one hasn't been touched so if you want to edit it by all means do. BTW I like your analogy.

 

[Rocan]

what camera are you shooting with?

 

[dylanstraub]

Canon 40D or Xti

 

[dylanstraub]

Looks like I was wrong. I thought I'd read the user manual but it needs to be read again.

 

[dylanstraub]

Any recommendations on how to process raw images? My Photoshop skills are not the greatest.

 

[Rocan]

I always keep a digital copy nearby for every camera I own. theres TONS of info in there.

shoot raw... itll force you to edit every single picture; which you should be doing. dont let the camera make decisions for you on how your image should look.

going over your flickr you seem to have many great images (i notice a lot of macro and dogs)... notably the ones of the sunset taken with your iphone... you have a nack for taking good pics. spend some more time considering WHAT about the location made you think to take a picture, and focus in on that one thing. also avoid cropping after the fact if you can. a good trick is to take a couple images with each zoomed in a different amount.