Challenge:Low Key (Basic Editing III) Camera:Nikon D50 Location: Condo in Lake Bluff Il. Date: Mar 18, 2006 Aperture: 13.0 ISO: 800 Shutter: 30 sec. Galleries:Urban Date Uploaded: Mar 19, 2006
I see this is your first challenge entry. Welcome to DPC! This is an extraordinary learning venue for those that have the desire to develop their photographic skills. Well, let's see what we've got here, and try to give you some useful thoughts to mull over.
The first thing that strikes me about this image is the lovely reflections, centerpiece of a pleasing, solid composition. Reflections are a great element to include in photos, they normally add a lot of aesthetics and interest to a scene. The shoreline of the pond is placed nicely. There is a nice subtle curve to it, and it provides a good leading line through the shot, giving the viewers eye a way to 'travel' through the image and take them to the main subject. I like the little stand of bushes at right, I think they provide an anchoring point for the lines of the pond, and help the overall balance of the photo. The image does have a balanced feel. You've avoided placing the shoreline across the center of the frame, this is good, you normally want to avoid the center for horizons, and shorelines and such. With the buildings at the top, and the mainly featureless greater area at the bottom provides 'weight' to the image, and gives it the balanced feel.
Now, as to your score on this entry, I think there are essentially 3 big factors working against this photo. First, the image needs to be sharper, as a couple of your commenters pointed out. Low light can be difficult for this area. Depending on what editing software you use, you can apply USM (unsharp mask) for sharpening an image. Of course, an image does have to start out well focused to really work. In this type of situation, if you're not already, you might want to try using manual focus instead of auto.
Secondly, as a commenter pointed out, there does seem to be an unfavorable color cast to the image. Kind of a yellowish/reddish tint to everything. This could be partially due to the lighting, could be white balance settings. It could be in your editing. (at this point let me interject-when seeking an indepth critique, it is a good idea and helpful for the critiquer if you put in as much info as you can in the photographer's comments. things like what you were 'going for' in the image, techniques used, processing you did, etc. ) Again, depending on what editing you did, it could be a moniter calibration problem also. You could check your image from different moniters (if possible) and see if it looks the same as the one you do your editing on. You could possibly fix the color in your processing in a variety of ways. Using selective color adj., or color balance, channel mixer, or even levels or curves adj.
Thirdly, is the challenge topic, also as several commenters pointed out :-) Meeting the challenge theme is a big part of the score here at dpc. You can submit the most awesome image, but if it doesn't fit the challenge, it will not do well. It is important to not only look at the challenge title, but the details/description as well. Make sure, especially when it is a technical challenge, such as Low Key, that you have a good understanding of what the challenge is that week. If you look at the top images of the challenge, they are obviously good examples of 'Low Key'. Photos that are predominantly dark, with little highlights. If you look at your shot, you'll see that, although you took it at night, it is actually not very dark at all and there are a lot of highlights.
I think you've got a good eye. This is a nice composition, that might of scored a little better in a different challenge. Work on some technical stuff. Check out the forums here. Take a look at the tutorials (under Learn on the menu bar). I look forward to seeing more of your photos :-)
If you have any questions or comments or anything, please feel free to contact me.
The reflection in the pond makes this a nice composition and it is very well balanced. The compositional contrast between pond and structures is almost a commentary on suburbia.
To improve this image you might start with correcting the color cast. You can see it both in the slate color in the sky and yellowish/reddish hue over the rest of the scene. Though part of this effect may be due to lighting, it mostly looks like a color cast. If you could have removed the white object in the middle foreground it would have got rid of that distracting element. Under advanced rules you could simply clone it out.
Sharpness in this image is not strong and you should try to sharpen it more. Sharpness always proves to be a problem in lower light levels images like this. This problem is not unique to you.
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