Refugee from Reddit
That’s really satisfying.
Out of interest, did you have to work at making the lit-up light shade at all presentable? I’m guessing it was blown out as much brighter than the background sky, and ended up looking inserted because it’s a flat colour rather than with a gradient of brightness.
Indeed, an important question, and also, how consistent in sizes, and for that matter, how good a reproduction is wanted.
Things like the Epson FF-680W exist for this sort of task - not terribly fast (and there are believable tales of streaking), but still a whole lot faster than manual scanning, and becomes cheaper than professional services at useful numbers of photos.
The Bandlands, where Heavy Rock bands roam free, and perform to sheep while wasted.
…
Sorry.
Nice photo regardless, but it is a little hard to spot the squalls due to the lack of contrast between failing rain and sky.
Yes, that is far more to my taste (but then, everyone’s taste differs): I like a frame of fuzzy around a sharp subject.
I’ve never seriously tried focus stacking, but I’d suspect it might be a challenge with this, no matter what you had - and what’s worse, might look a bit fake!
I get the impression you’ve let your camera set its focus on the close vegetation framing the shot, rather than the mountain. Thus the mountain is “soft” and the leaves “sharp”. While that might be deliberate, if it isn’t, you might want to investigate focus modes on your camera.
The graffiti in B&W is quite interesting, and perhaps is an example of a lesser benefit of B&W, which is reducing irrelevant confusion (the greater benefit being cases of “well this photo doesn’t have much colour in it anyway, let’s make that a positive”). Multiple layers of graffiti just feels messy, this in some sense flattens the layers.
As others have said, kite is bad in B&W, locks get a different look (and perhaps lose distracting colour if you are going for “alike but different”).
You may indeed, that’s a fun angle and I like the increased light levels.
And just to irritate the auteur - personally, I prefer buildings taken at a slight angle to give a greater sense of depth. So in that sense, I prefer your bonus picture (and so would instead be cursing the tree within the fenced areas rather than the wire).
But if that’s arched windows in the far side of the church being framed by arched windows on this side, then I can see why you want a shot from right where you took it (or at least on a straight line in 3D space that only gets close to the ground where you were) - it adds a “not immediately spotted interesting feature” which is a good thing.
Also personal taste, but I might have tried playing with the luminance histogram (or whatever your tools call it) for the RAW format, if I had it, and brighten up the stone work without blowing out the sky.
On 1. ironically, or in some sort act of negative karma, this Sunday I was loudly abused by a lady accusing me of having taken many photos of her, and “Stop or or I’ll go to the police” - made particularly weird by the fact I deliberately avoid taking photos of people or their dogs when out doing nature photography.
I actually pre-emptively contacted the police myself, just in case any report was made and for some reason the police took it seriously.
Depends on location - my comment was prompted by remembering https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20vlpwrzwdo It’s not happened to me personally.
It also sounds like the OP is fully aware of the issue, so great!
Positive: Interesting photo, no major technical issues I can spot.
Negatives to be aware of:
It seems likely at least one person in that photo would be extremely upset if a photo of them was posted on the Internet. And with rampant AI, this image may well get tagged by face recognition software somewhere.
You were waving either a decent phone or camera around in front of strangers, close to you, at night - I hope you were taking significant precautions against it being snatched
A shot that obviously had to be taken.
Now, I recognise that perspective was going to mess you about whatever you did, (long line, tall columns, starting close … doomed), but I suspect there’s a mild tilt in the photo, that might have been better corrected by a whole photo rotate.
I’m assuming Black&White by choice, and fair enough, I’m guessing there was little colour variation in the main subject.
I have to admit my strap is on the camera, but with that lens the strap is more of a fall-back support, in case my hands slip or I otherwise mess up the support. It’s actually far too heavy to dangle round the neck for anything but a grip change or putting in a camera rucksack. And I walk cradling it like a baby! (strap loose about my neck) Same reason I always have the hood attached if its out of the rucksack - a safety measure in case I drop it or knock against something, not on the off-chance of flare.
From the manual of the lovely beast that is the RF200-800:
Since the lens is heavier than the camera, turn the camera when attaching or detaching the lens. Ensuring that the lens can rest safely on its own is recommended, such as first mounting it on a tripod.
Be more confident in your work - those were worth my time looking at!
I do like the way you’ve subverted conventions. You’ve all those strong leading lines leading to … nothing. Instead, the beauty is on the far right, out of the way. and the rest just contrasts that beauty with urban.
It’s your photo, so you are correct (the only true judge of a piece of art is its artist).
I was thinking post-processing work, but anyway you’ve answered an unasked question of mine, which was whether it was the moon behind the crossed wires - and, incidentally, nice touch with that!