Kenilworth Castle Before Dawn

[laser_jock99]

Happened to be passing this castle at 7:00 am so I stopped in the drizzle to try and capture the greyness of the pre-dawn light.

From a different angle I got street lights making the clouds go orange - it's not the orange glow of dawn!

 

[Woodsy]

Hi mate. I see what you were trying to achieve, but they don't really work for me I'm afraid.

The first needs to be exposed for a fair while longer to try and get some details in the shot as a whole. Of course, that means the sky will be alot brighter than it probably was at the time. Only at the moment, we can't really see anything apart from the silouhett. I assume you didnt use a tripod? That would explain the use of f/3.5? Using a tripod would obviously solve alot of problems... Longer exposure to bring out the details, smaller aperture to increase DOF, and also assist in making the shot sharper as at the moment, the outlines look a tad out of focus.

With the other two, if you hadn'y have said about the street lights, no one would have known

Nice colours, but I feel the compositions lets them down slightly. I understand that shots such as those are harder to compose, but I can't help but feel they need more "oooomfff"?

Please don't take any offence by my comments, I just feel these could be built upon, that's all

 

[laser_jock99]

Thanks for your comments Woodsy. The sillouette effect is intentional- I was rather hoping it would give a more 'spooky' look, so I metered and exposed for the sky and not the castle walls. Long exposures presented a different problem this morning due to the fast moving clouds.

The photo below was 30 seconds at f22- although the streaked clouds look interesting I liked the cloud detail in the short exposure better.

 

[Wile E. coyote]

Prefer the longer exposure version of #1. The reflection in the water adds to foreground to improve the composition, seems a little bit soft at the edges though.

 

[Leviathan]

I had a quick play. Hope you dont mind

I took the long exposure water and combined it with the moody clouds.

(Not my pic)

Although personally i prefer the entire long exposure shot :shrug:

 

[laser_jock99]

I had a quick play. Hope you dont mind

I took the long exposure water and combined it with the moody clouds.

Although personally i prefer the entire long exposure shot :shrug:

I think some of the edge blurriness may be due to the budget Sigma Zoom lens I had on at the time- also all the twigs, branches and grasses were moving in the in the wind!

I might have a go later at combining so of the images- curiously they look a lot lighter on my office PC.

Edit: an interesting thought about the long exposure, streaked cloud effect- if you were able to shoot exactly down the line of direction of movement of the cloud/wind, you would get an interesting perspective effect with a very wideangle lens. Must re-shoot this one day. I'd like to get a bit nearer to the ruins but I think English Heritage would take a dim view of me scaling the walls to get in early!