Castle Howard

[brendan1980]

The first thing I noticed was that it needed straightening up.....but also, you could do eith taking a step or two to your right. As it is you're slightly of skew with the grass runway that leads to the fountain. Also maybe a few steps back too. These things have lead to you losing the symetry, because you have more hedgerows to the left than you do right.

Other wise, its a nice shot. Well worth re-visiting if you can.

[wil59]

Originally Posted by brendan1980

The first thing I noticed was that it needed straightening up.....but also, you could do eith taking a step or two to your right. As it is you're slightly of skew with the grass runway that leads to the fountain. Also maybe a few steps back too. These things have lead to you losing the symetry, because you have more hedgerows to the left than you do right.

Other wise, its a nice shot. Well worth re-visiting if you can.

Thanks for your comments. We have a annual pass to this place, it is an amazing house and grounds with plenty to explore and hundreds of photo ops. Therefore it is certain I will go back, and is why I picked on this photo for the critique, as when I do go I can take a copy of this thread and try to get a perfect shot.

Thanks again for all the comments

John

[hssutton]

Wil59

I've taken the liberty of modifying your photo with the suggestions provided. The easy way to lighten/darken an area is by the use of the 'Graduation Tool', simple for me as I use CS5. Maybe not in your editor but can be found the excellent freeware photo editor Paint.Net.



Last year I took a photo from with the fountain behind me. This was the result.



http://www.getpaint.net/features.html

Harry

Looking at the images posted I'm astounded at the extremely poor quality of photos when posted here

[wil59]

Looking at the images posted I'm astounded at the extremely poor quality of photos when posted here[/QUOTE]

I thought that was the point of the Critique thread, so that newbies like me can post pictures, poor or otherwise in order to get constructive feedback with intent to improve!!!

Your modification of mine, and your own photo look great by the way.

[hssutton]

Wil59 Pleased you liked it.

Just to show you the difference of thr Castle Howard photo posted on another site.

http://api.photoshop.com/v1.0/accoun...=1347538908000

Harry

[brendan1980]

I would look at getting some editing software like elementa10 (which I use) or maybe lightroom, if you don't want the expense of the full photoshop package. I paid aprox £35 for elements10 from curry's. (it was on sale, usually about £70-80) and I think lightroom is in a similar price bracket of around £60-80. Both great softaware packages with more than enough features for amateurs like us to use.

You would then be able to create two layers in order to get the whole scene exposed correctly.
Dodge and Burn are useful tools as well.

[wil59]

Thanks Brendan,

It is worth keeping an eye open for the offer. My copy of elements is from a few years ago and came free with something I bought. I am hoping to deal with composition better in camera first off, but realise some editing will be necessary. It will take time I realise, but that is the fun of it for me.

Cheers, John

[brendan1980]

Originally Posted by wil59

Thanks Brendan,

It is worth keeping an eye open for the offer. My copy of elements is from a few years ago and came free with something I bought. I am hoping to deal with composition better in camera first off, but realise some editing will be necessary. It will take time I realise, but that is the fun of it for me.

Cheers, John

No problem.

That's the fun of it for all of us. One thing I found usefull was having a small notebook in my camera bag. i write down any tips that I recieve, so as to check them next time I'm out. the great thing about digital cameras is that we can check our images on the screen instantly, so checking compositional issues is pretty easy really. But getting to know your histagram can be a vital thing, to check on exposure. As far as I'm aware, most histogram images will have little blinking parts, to tell you where you have blown the highlights, so you know you need to bring the exposure down a touch. (There are always exceptions to this though).

Brendan

[wil59]

One of my problems so far is not knowing what various software is capable of, and what I can or can not do. With the help of this forum, and this post I am slowly learning. I found the Gradient tools and mask tools in one of my software last night after reading Hssutton's reply, and gave it a go on a different image, I was amazed at the difference it made. When I get chance I will try playing with my original image from the post to see if I can improve it.

So a big thankyou to everyone for your comments, help and support.

Cheers, John

[wil59]

I have played with the original image, and am slowly starting to mess around with the pp software that I have. The results are a lot better, and it is somewhat thanks to this forum for pointing me in the right direction. I hope to correct some of the mistakes in camera to begin with, but now know some of the things I can change afterwards.

I have been using the free PhotoDirector 2011 that came with an issue of this magazine a few months back, and I quite like it, more recently I downloaded a 30 day trial of Photo Director 3, which is better, but will soon run out. I think it has it's limitations, but is easier to get to grips with than Photoshop.

Thanks for all the help.

John