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:

1. 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.

2. 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).

This is of course just my opinion, but I’d say you’ve an interesting subject, and parts of that photo are really satisfying, but some of the rest, especially at the bottom, badly detracts from the rest.

Personally, I’d either consider redoing with a different choice of aperture, distance or even focus stacking to get more in focus, or if that’s not practical, some significant cropping.

And that, too, is a proper use of a camera :) Quietly satisfying.

if you haven’t already, one thing to ask yourself is whether you should rotate the shot to make the leftmost verticals truly vertical. it’s not a question with a universal correct answer - with a photo like this, you could easily decide that true vertical will look too clinical and against the spirit of the rest of the photo, and that the “out of the camera” angle is better. And it is your opinion that counts!

I used to use entirely clear filters (UV blocking, perhaps) purely for protection. After seeing various debates I swapped over to religiously using a lens hood, regardless of whether there was glare making the hood needed for its actual purpose. I think the argument was that hoods protect against a wider range of impacts, and in particular provide some cushioning, while filters obviously have an optical impact even if “clear”. Third party hoods are also cheap.

That said, hoods are bulky, so filters as protection have their place.

Really satisfying photo…

Except for those paper cups.

A nice combo of crimes against the sky.

Though what it really needs is a few jet vapour trails, preferably with a jet in shot!

Perhaps try setting the camera to manual focus and a plausible distance - I almost feel sorry for auto-focus trying to make sense of what it’s seeing in those circumstances!

But a good experiment to try.

In passing, since you are learning about RAW format processing, you can do some quite extreme things to the luminance/histogram/gamma/whatever to bring out a little more detail in these sorts of shots, because the range of tones is rather narrow. Some also have fun boosting one of the colour components - “Mineral moon processing”.

If you get addicted to trying for the best possible moon shot, you may find https://clearoutside.com/forecast/ Useful for knowing when the nights will be clear

Also, don’t discount early morning/evening moon photos - there can still be enough details to make the effort worthwhile even in daylight (if you play with the RAW).

OK, I’ll bite, why “MilkTea” as a title?

Interesting article and photos within it, but what made you want to post this one here out of all possible interesting articles on photography? Can we look forward to your own work with stairs?

A fun experiment.

It always amuses me to think how common blue moons actually are: “A blue moon refers either to the presence of a second full moon in a calendar month, to the third full moon in a season containing four, or to a moon that appears blue due to atmospheric effects.” - from Wikipedia, so maybe once or twice a year even just from the “twice in a month” form.