Opinions Wanted

[toosuto]

I've taken quite a few landscape shots since I've been in Scotland but more often than not I've ended up deleting them (or best just burying them in iPhoto and never looking again). Behind the cut are three shots from Castle Edinburgh and if you have an opinion on what works and what doesn't I'd like to hear it because I just don't seem to have a handle on it.

A word of warning I may have edited and reloaded the photos based on previous feedback, just in case a any of the feedback below seems strange or just wrong. Also concrete answers, of course, are much better than general comments (i.e. "the crane in the second picture breaks up the flow of the photo from point a to point b" rather than "the crane gives me hives").

Comments

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

I think what they need is a bit more Rule of Thirds.

So in the first picture, crop of a little bit of the sky to nudge the horizon upward, and then on the left to lose the black tower that's crowding the edge -- probably just to the left of the white dome (up top) and the portico (down below) so you don't cut them in half. Then the big hill would dominate the left two-thirds of the image with the orange building balancing it on the right.

You could also crop it more severely so it was just big gray building, hill, and bridge-thingy, leaving out the orange buildings and the road, but it'd be hard. That'd probably work better if you moved a couple hundred feet to your left before taking the picture...

The second picture is really hard. I think it's mostly working left-to-right, but you've got the horizon right in the middle. Problem being that there are two horizon lines: land/sky and light-sky/dark-clouds, and you can't shift them far enough without either losing the top of the steeple or cutting off all the buildings. I think what it really wants is an extra 40-50% along the bottom, and then you could work with it.

Actually, there is one really radical thing you can do with it: crop it so that there's just the steeple on the right, the crane on the left, and a little bit of mountain along the bottom edge. The cloud line drops down to about the 1/3 mark and the little scruff of tree and mountain adds some interest. It's very minimalist, but kinda neat.

The third picture is mostly working; the compositional balance is nice, the angles are interesting, and the contrast in colors is appealing. I think you want to take a little slice off the left (or add on a little on the right) and a little slice off the bottom to balance it just a little, and then you'll have this nice layer of white, layer of gray/brown, and layer of green. The only other problem is that the white at the top tends to bleed off into the page. You can fix that by putting a border around it. Try it. I think it needs to be colored, not just black, so try a dark gray or brown color.

So I guess my summing-up thought is that if you're not doing it all in-camera, take your picture too big so you have margins to work with when you're adjusting the composition afterwards.