Hope I'm not being too brutal but since you asked for comments I'll give it a go.
First, off, the subject matter of the photograph is not extremely interesting. The sunset is great, and the light caught in the clouds might otherwise be a nice subject, but the addition of the house roofs just looks haphazard and sloppy. You see roofs like that in snapshots, not in 'photographs', if you know what I mean. Always think of a photograph as a painting, meaning, if you were 'painting' the scene by hand, would you actively add the tops of the houses and the little bit of the tree? If so, for what reason? The point being, you need to think about every element of the photograph, and if it doesn't add anything to the impact of the photograph, then it detracts from it, and thus you should not include it. Simplicity is usually king.
Next off, the impact of the photograph would be helped by a contrast boost. You may not see it, but there are a whole bunch of muddy grays in the sky, you need to get them out and get clean colors. You can do this in photoshop through the use of Levels, Curves, or by going into Selective Color > Choosing Neutrals > Pumping up the 'black' within the Neutrals.
There also might be a pinkish cast on the whole image, so it might be benefited by setting a 'true black' and a 'true white' point, which are found in the Levels and Curves options. Setting the darkest point of the photograph as 'true black' will augment all the other pixels relative to that pixel, and will render the photo clean and 'cast-free'. Check out the basic tutorials on this website if you don't know what I'm talking about this or the contrast thing.
Finally, whatever noise reduction or art effect you put on the image was too much. The house tops look cartoonish and unreal. Those effects might have a positive impact on the sky, so if you do that you should make sure to only apply the effect to the sky. Do so by adding the effect to a duplicate of your background, and then erasing out the parts of the image that you don't want the effect applied to, so the buildings remain sharp and interesting while the sky gets that ethereal look.
Not trying to be mean here just offering my honest thoughts and suggestions for how you can improve! Good luck with it all, this site is great for learning. |
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