The lighthouse

batmura · Jan 30, 2013

C&C welcome.

#1

#2

TonySafe · Jan 30, 2013

Straighten out those horizons and you have a couple of nice shots there

FanBoy · Jan 30, 2013

There's too much open space on these compositions and the lighting suffers.

spicyTuna · Feb 1, 2013

Try earlier in the day. Usually anywhere between sunset and 20-30 minutes after will give you a more colorful sky.

I'd get a closer to the lighthouse if possible too.

shefjr · Feb 1, 2013

As stated above, yet worth repeating, the horizon isn't level and there is too much open space around the light house. I am a big fan of light houses and this one could be great just with some minor improvements. For me number 1 is close to having the light house as the subject however, with all the negative space around it, for me it falls into the landscape a little too much.
This is just my opinion though. If you like it that's all that matters.

LaFoto · Feb 2, 2013

The fact that the coastline on the other side of the water cuts through the base of the lighthouse takes away from it being your subject. Thus your subject kind of gets lost in the background. So when you reshoot, you should try to find a position where you can show your primary subject a lot more prominently.

amolitor · Feb 2, 2013

When you're far away from the lighthouse, it gets lost against the lights (LaFoto has some good ideas here) and when you get too close, it becomes apparent that it's not a very attractive lighthouse

You have some strong compositional ideas here, nice strong lines, but it's not quite coming together for me as a composition, either.

I do like the sky and water you've got here, especially in #2. Very simple textures, but with a little tonal variation. It's calm, but not dull.

ceeboy14 · Feb 2, 2013

Perhaps in your next shot of this, you might want to consider other angles, crops and focal lengths. This is just one. Interestingly, when I reset your black and white points, I found this guy at the base of the lighthouse, fishing. The pole got lost in the cutting, pasting and scaling.

It needs a lot more work than a simple exercize in CS6 can provide, but perhaps all the suggestions above will get you to a better composition. Good luck!