Keeping Prague Movingby
GeorgeComment by jasonlprice: Greetings from the Critique Club
Let me start out with what I like about this photo (and is what the other comments have already stated). The colors really take this shot from a lower 5 to a higher 5. The color scheme is "complimentary" which simply means the colors in the photo are across from each other on the color wheel. That makes the contrast really high between the orange building, blue-grey building and blue sky. The other element that makes this photo exciting is all the great repeating patterns. The foreground white lines on the cross walk, the windows and crosses in the windows, and the building itself.
Unfortunately the very elements that make this photo great probably bring the votes down for the challenge. I like to break the story of a photo down to 3 elements, Main subject, Supporting Elements, and Background. In your photo the building is the main subject. The power lines, street, bus, cars, signs, and people are the supporting elements, and the blue sky is the background. I think it is the fact that the power lines are only supporting elements (in my humble opinion) that kept this from being in the 6 range.
As far as the technical aspect, I don't see anything that would majorly affect your score. There are halos around the power lines from sharpening, but it would be very hard to avoid that in this situation. Another thing to consider would be opening up the aperture. I'm not familiar with the 18-55 lens you used, but most zoom lenses are not as sharp stopped down. You could safely hand hold down to 1/60th at 55mm on that lens and get a couple of extra stops on your aperture. I know on my 18-55 canon lens it is much sharper between f8 and f11. If it were me I would also go up to ISO 400 or even 800 to get that particular lens up to its "sweet spot". I am not suggesting that you needed more DOF, only that the technicals of the lens would have been better. I donĂ¢€™t mind the darkness of the photo at all and donĂ¢€™t think the voters did either. The great contrast and the good range in tonal values tells the voter that you had good control over the exposure.
To sum up, I like this photo and do not consider it too dark or boring in any way. 5.6181 is a good score here at DPC and the only thing it needed to be higher would be to make the power lines more prominent as Wolf stated in his comment. Of course that would completely change the photo and would then be a different story all-together, but would meet the challenge more!
Photographer found comment helpful.
