Wasn't going to enter this challenge until I took a few minutes out from a rehearsal at the drama group in (we rehearse next to the church) and noticed there were six windows on the church. I've been dying to find an excuse to shoot the church at night for a while.
Shot in RAW (handheld), different pics made at EVs from +4 to -4 (all from one original capture), combined into one shot.
More editing in PSP: noise removal, some cloning (wanted to clone the frames of the leftmost windows as they've caught the light more than I'd like but it proved problematic and, anyway, it's an old building and it's bound to look weathered in places), Hid a HSL adjustment to make it a bit less red and then a bit less yellow. Finally put "night effect" film using PSP.
Then, just sharpened and resized for web.
Statistics
Place: 91 out of 134 Avg (all users): 5.2139 Avg (commenters): 5.5000 Avg (participants): 5.2931 Avg (non-participants): 5.1783 Views since voting: 558 Views during voting: 288 Votes: 187 Comments: 7 Favorites: 0
First reaction: "Oh. A squint picture of a church."
You've met the challenge, you've gone for a slightly unusual composition, that's all good, but there's something about this image that doesn't quite work for me. I'll try and explain why, and I hope you consider it constructive...
I think partly it's to do with the subject matter. Churches are already ornate things in themselves, they get photographed a lot, and the picture needs to be pretty damn striking to really get a positive reaction. So just average ones tend to get an extra negative reaction of "Hmm, wow, another church. How exciting.", which the quality of the picture in itself may not entirely justify.
Composition... I like the positioning of the steeple, but I don't like the angle of the church, it makes me feel dizzy. And those gravestones poking out of the bottom right of the picture seem a bit out of place. So maybe the first thing to suggest would be to experiment with different amounts of zooming, positions and angles, and try and find one that really works.
Since the editing rules now allow it, you could also try playing with tonemapping multiple exposures. I know you couldn't have done it handheld, but if you do decide to go back with a tripod...
Another problem I had with the image was that I find the light and the colours a bit unappealing. The light is mainly flat, except for those awkward tombstone shadows. And the colour comes across as either too warm (the church) or too cold (the steeple). Might be an idea to tweak with those separately in post-processing, and try and get the colour temperatures to work.
Maybe some dodging and burning or soft light layers would make the light more interesting, but there's only so much you can do. Instead, a more fun way to do it might be to do a long exposure and selectively light up bits of the church with a flashlight, or set off your flash manually a couple of times in different places. Just something to experiment with.
Anyway, sorry, I don't find this image works for me, but I'd be intrigued to see if you could make it work... So a little personal challenge could be to go back and reshoot the same church, play with it, and see what else you could come up with :)
I almost did one just like this last night but there was 2 cars in the way. I think you should have brightened it up just a tad or used the dodge tool on the windows to bring them out.
Add photograph to your favorites
Add photographer to your favorites
Photographer found comment helpful.
