Iowa City @ sunset

[ShouldBeStudyin]

I'm curious to hear what you all think of this photo. I took it the other evening and I can't make up my mind. I like aspects of it, but I think it might be missing something. What are your thoughts?

[sana]

You may try to crop at least half of the black ground at the bottom, I covered it with a piece of paper and the sky looked much more spacy, and interesting. If you want to keep the cropping ratio, then crop from sides equaly. I like the photo and that 'romantic' industrial sunset!

[Saralonde]

Beautiful sky, but the foreground is a bit distracting. Sana may be right about the cropping, maybe even take a litle off the top.

[yurik]

I think it's a great photo. I especially like the composition..

I agree with cropping part of the bottom. If not, at least make all of your foreground black..

One other thing is I feel like the wisp of smoke coming from the smokestack is more of a distraction than addition to the photo

[hsroxas]

Shouldbstudyin:
Funny, but I got the same feeling as you did on the image. Parts of it are nice but as whole it seems to be loosing the impact.
I guess what you could do is to crop the image into several versions (as earlier suggested by the other reviewers) and you own versions. It is not meant to improve the image but to discover what framing could have been more effective. My own feeling is that if you just retain the lower 1/4 of the picture (left hand corner facing the image) while maintaining your aspect ratio, the image would be more dramatic and create better impact.
Just a thought.

[jiminyClickit]

ShouldBeStudyin,

After seeing 1000's of photos, this one spoke to me: "I need a frame, a context as big as the sky." Any beautiful sunset can benefit from a contrast, something as big (one of those smokestacks up closer), or dark (silhouette) as the sunset is light.

[ShouldBeStudyin]

First, thanks for all the suggestions. I'd say that I pretty much agree with all the comments posted.

This is my attempt at incorporating a number of the comments (crop and darken foreground, remove smoke [I think it is actually steam]). It certainly is an improvement.


Here the composition is quite different, as both hsroxas and jiminyClickit suggested. Not a huge fan of this one, but I thought I'd post it anyway.


As I said before, thanks for all the comments. Often I see notice that something is wrong with a photo, but can't put it into words. Your comments are helping me to figure out exactly what can be improved (as well as avoid making the mistakes in the future). As for this photo, I think I am going to let it go as I feel like I am trying to force it to be something it isn't. Cheers.

[painperdu]

The second edit (vertical) looks more balanced and pleasing.