castle

[KEMPEZ]

Hi, i would really like to get into photography and it would be great to get some help with ideas with what to do with my pictures to make them stand out! Please help, thank you!

[TheDoc]

I find the foreground distracting. My eye is drawn to the trees and grass and I sort of ignore the castle. I different crop (perhaps cutting off the grass) would help it.

Then again, I don't know what I'm talking about. haha

[KEMPEZ]

How's that?

[TheDoc]

Much better already, my eyes are immediately drawn to the castle.

Now you just need one of the pros on the forums to talk to you about lighting, dodge/burning, HDR, and all that fun stuff that I know zilch about.

(one more thing: I'd probably get rid of the tree branches that are coming in from the top left/right of the picture. Should be easy considering it's a perfectly blue sky. Just clone-stamp them out.)

[Politik]

I really like the 2nd crop.

What I feel was wrong with the original (just my .02 for next time):

Photos like this should tell a story. Meaning a beginning, middle, and an end. The tree branches work great at a foreground and a natural frame (you killed 2 birds with one stone on that one) but the grass and the trees conflict for the middle of the story.. Having that big of conflict in the middle is like a 2nd climax and we cant have that happen in a book (err enough with the symbolic talk). The eyes are drawn to the trees because we natural view the grass as the middle and the trees as the end.


The 2nd one is great because the tree branches frame your shot and give a beginning. The trees play a nice middle, and the castle makes a great ending!


The ONLY thing i see that distracts me is the non-green tree on the left side of the tree line. It reaches up too high and takes away from the left of the castle.

Play around with your angles a bit and keep shooting. You are off to a great start my friend!

edit: Be careful with the natural frames. In this case, them covering up part of the castle is kind of distracting as well. Maybe if they just came in to the sky a bit it would work better.

[Edited on 3/21/2008 by Politik]

[KEMPEZ]

Thanks for the advice guys, i will take it on board and try to incorporate it into future work!
Cheers!