Glenelg Adealide

Hi David, there's a lot of sky and sea which along with the central horizon don't do a lot for the composition, my eyes are struggling to rest on a focal point (not that there always needs to be one) but in this image I suspect it's the red thing, in which case a much closer crop would be better.
 
Thank you Mark and Steve for your feedback will have a go at cropping it
 
You appear to have used a wide angle lens and pointed it slightly downwards, so my assumption is that you deliberately chose to have a large expanse of sea in the foreground. The almost equal amounts of sea and sky constitute one of the reasons why I'm not keen on this.

I have a number of minor niggles, which can be listed as:

1. The obviously unvertical verticals caused by pointing the lens downwards. This is made very obvious by the white building at the right frame edge.

2. The way the top of the pier (?) just manages to line up with the shore line behind. I would have preferred to either see some water (even only a narrow ribbon) or have the top hide the buildings beyond.

3. The way that the pier tapers but is ultimately cut off by the left hand frame edge. If you had included more, it would have completed the taper; cropping the image as is only creates an unbroken wall across the centre, so seems to be a bad idea.

Other points are the three things that catch the eye almost at once. The first is the white building on the right edge; the second the red floating stage (?); and the third the white object just beyond it. I don't find that these lead my eye gently across the image so much as drag it to specific points, which means that I don't appreciate it as a cohesive image.

There are certain types of image that don't need a central focus (which may not necessarily be in the physical centre of course), and one which doesn't is the panorama, where the attention is supposed to be allowed to wander over a number of point of equal importance. In this case, converting to a panorama doesn't seem to help, because the central strip is too even in heights and tones to provide the visual variety of a panorama.

My suggestion for an alternative would be to leave the bottom complete and to crop the sky. By placing the buildings nearer to the top of the image, you'll emphasise their height, and make the tower - well more towering. It would strengthen visually the appearance and I think make the image more cohesive.
 
Thank you StephenM for your CC
this Photo was taken at iso200, 1/100, f16.00, 18mm 0,00ev
using Nikon d5100 with 18-55mm lens
I have done a minor crop to see if it improves it any
View attachment 3044
Please let me know what you think
David
 
I really don't mean to be rude, it's just not a very interesting picture, sorry.
 
Most of the comments are along the same lines. For someone who knows the area, "hey, that's near my house" (or whatever) - there's an instant point of reference. For others the question is "what's the subject?". There is a lot of small waves, there's a lot of sky, a lot of rocks. Is the subject the wooden pier? The red boat/tug? The different coloured houses?

I think there's several good photos in that location, but the image is getting all in at once. As the first comment says, your eye doesn't know where to look. Maybe look at a bit more subtraction? Pick one item to highlight, and eliminate others as much as possible? The structures and lines of the houses would look great in certain light, so too perhaps the line of the wooden pier leading to the boat, that kind of thing. You're lucky to have a nice area!
 
This is something I can be guilty of too - taking a picture of a scene that looks 'interesting' but contains nothing in particular of interest. For *me* for this kind of image to work then it either needs to be pretty (rolling gorgeous countryside) or details need isolating. It would probably make good computer wallpaper.
 
Absolutely, I certainly didn't mean to imply it's a "bad" image, only that the many people may take something different from it compared to people who know the spot.

Composition is, for me, the black art of photography, and it seems something some people have an innate feel for, and others learn. I'm definitely the latter category. I guess everyone can recognise and will respond to a well constructed image - but it's actually deconstructing that process and learning how to build that for ourselves which is hard.

I personally find benefit from going back through my old images from several years ago. Do I (still) like this? Why did I do that? If I were there again how would I interpret that differently. It's massively enlightening, as well as motivational to make the most of the scenes and moments we get.
 
Hi Mouse (I hope you're a Herbert fan BTW) I didn't read your comment that way.

Did you see that link to the Scott Kelby 'Crush the composition' video? It's worth watching at from the POV of just getting us to think about what we're seeing, why we looked in the first place and how we can get the best from what we saw.
 
Looks like a lovely spot albeit very different to our Glenelg.
 
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