Old Shanty

Seadawg · Mar 2, 2015

Old Shanty on Fancy Hall Bluff, Keller Georgia. As always C&C are welcome. Thanks for looking.

kdthomas · Mar 3, 2015

I like the detail, but it seems like there's too much midtones for my taste. Maybe if the contrast could be boosted, or maybe monkey with the channels a bit.

fjrabon · Mar 3, 2015

looks kind of like tone mapped, then sharpened B&W. Kind of creates a wood engraving or ballpoint pen drawing feel almost. Not sure how I feel about the processing. It kind of feels a bit overdone, but at the same time I do like the detail.

Seadawg · Mar 4, 2015

It was an hdr shot, but liked it better in b/w than in color. It did bump up the clarity in lr a good bit. Thank you for the feed back.

Seadawg · Mar 4, 2015

Other than the over processing, how is the shot compositionally?

kdthomas · Mar 4, 2015

You know, I'm looking at it a bit more ... and I saw another image that sort of "itched" the same way when I looked at it ... I'm a total newbie, so I'm learning as much as anyone can be

I think it's that when I look at it, there's so much detail, it's hard to pick out what the subject is. What am I supposed to be looking at? The shack? The texture in the ground, the tree bark, the leaves?

As far as compositionally, the big dark area is dead center. How about maybe a crop with the barn opening centered in the left third?

One person's advice I've been trying out is Ken Rockwell. I tend to like his ideas on composition. Like anyone I take what I like of his and throw the rest away. One piece of advice of his that I like is to stand back and squint until the image is a blur. If the large-scale, "strategic" parts of the image are pleasing, then that opens the door for the rest of the image to be pleasing.

Just rambling ... hope my newbie $.02 is worth something!

Seadawg · Mar 4, 2015

I thought about cropping the image as you said but i thought it would look weird with half a Palm tree.

Thank you for the reply.

Seadawg · Mar 5, 2015

Ok, so I guessed I peed in some ones grits when I posted this photo in the HDR section asking for critiques on the HDR aspect of this shot. That being said, since the shot was intended to be HDR, and I am still trying to figure it out, can someone please explain to me what I did wrong or right (if anything).

Thanks,

CJ

Light Guru · Mar 5, 2015

I don't think the scene needed the HDR tonemaping done to it. The scene does not look like it has a high enough dynamic range to need the HDR work done on it.

Try going back to the image before you did the HDR processing on it.