wooden stairs - LOTS of C&C please

[DanCanon]

This past summer I was on a hiking trail trying to find some good shots. took this one of some old wooden stairs. I was trying to take a pic that was simple but eye pleasing. I know this pic isn't much but I am wondering what everyone else thinks of it. Don't hold back
ISO 100, f/3.5, 1/30 sec

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ds_-_photos/

 

[Rudha]

hi in my opinion if the stairs were more in the center of the photograph it would have been even better...but i like the exposure and your focus....they are great

 

[milo_d]

it s great shoot ... Rudha has a good point you should have made them symmetrical or with a greater asymmetrical fealing... great chromatic harmony

 

[Derrel]

I see where you were going with this. One thing to me is that the front stair looks positively huge, and the one behind it much smaller, and so on. This makes the foreground appear very large, and the background appears very small, in a physical sense as well as in an emotional sense. This is a matter of perspective; if you had moved your camera back twice as far, and used a focal length twice as long, the image would have been rendered much differently. Your decision is neither right nor wrong; the pic is was it is. You've got lovely,accurate-looking greens and the old railroad tie steps look well-rendered. The sky is a bit hot, but not a big deal.

I think I might have tried to shoot it from farther back, with a longer lens, and used the added distance to allow me to get decent depth of field, while at the same time, the longer focal length would effectively "magnify" the on-sensor size of the steps in the distance. The way you did it places a lot of emphasis on the size and presence of the front steps,and the bit of grass growing there, but that makes the background look small,and far away.

The way you shot this, from close-range and with a very prominet foreground subject is the way the TV bass anglers often show off a middlin' sized bass....hold him up close to a wide-angle lens, keep their arm perfectly straight and Bammo! A three pound bass looks HUGE compared to that tiny-looking fisherman who is only an arm's length behind the bass! This is also one way fashion photogs make models look so long and leggy in seated poses. Moderate W-A lens from 5-10 feet, produces exaggerated size on nearby objects compared with the balance of the distance ranges.

In your photo, there are so many steps and so much area devoted to the descending line of stairs that I am just craving more detail in the trees and steps at the top of the frame.