This is a church in iceland, called Kopavogskirkja. The shot was taken just before midnight on a beautiful and still night. Did some saturation, contrast, brightness, sharpening and NeatImage. Used a tripod.
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Place: 30 out of 142 Avg (all users): 5.9398 Avg (commenters): 7.8571 Avg (participants): 5.8977 Avg (non-participants): 6.0222 Views since voting: 1383 Votes: 133 Comments: 9 Favorites: 0
I didn't finish voting on this challenge, so this is the first time I've seen your shot, and I must say its very nice!
Colour, Composition, Contrast:
The placement of the cross in the right part of the frame was a good choice. This shot has several leading lines, all which take us from the bottom of the frame up, which is a doubly powerful effect given your spiritual subject matter.
The contrast is great, though I do think I see some jpeg artifacts around the cross...it seems a bit jagged in parts.
I also like the simple, solid tones in this shot, with just the dark black and shadows and the yellowy green glow, its especially great around the cross which seems to itself be glowing..how spooky!
Focus and Lighting:
Again, I really like the lighting in this shot. Was it original or did you hue shift and saturate to get it? Either way, its very well done and I like the contrast it brings as against the cross.
You mentioned in your notes that you used a tripod, I am left wondering, then, why the cross seems out of focus. It might be that the light was simply too low, but I think the real problem is that your aperature was set to F2.8, which is a very shallow DOF. So you got the top (and maybe middle) of the cross in focus, but not the bottom as it was closer to you and thus, on a different plane for the focus. For a shot like this, I would try a bigger f-stop to give you a greater DOF.
Overall:
Neat shot, with wonderful clean lines and some decent impact. Despite all the nice elements, I still think its lacking some real "wow" (I hate using that cliche, but it works) factor. Elusive thing that wow, but really it translates to, for me, that there just isn't enough or the right elements in the picture to make me fall out of my chair. :) Keep up the solid work though!
Beautiful photo. It's hard to believe that anyone made me enjoy looking at any part of a church. Strong composition. The lighting is nice too...I like everything about this photo. (With the exception of it being a church) A 10 from me!