Lifesaver

[mappleby]

This one was taken in Prince Edward Island on Canada's east coast... What a beautiful place.

Opinions?

[Murtasma]

I like the angle the exposer is nice but I think taking a few steps to the right would help. The Reeds if that's what they are in front of the light house are pretty distracting peraps if they were off to the left side not diectly i front of he bulding.

[Robin Sarac]

I agree with Murtasma that the reeds are distracting. I see you were already at 18mm so you couldn't move in and zoom out to eliminate them. Your only option seem to have been to move to the left or right.

[echo9er]

My first thought was "what are those grass reeds doing there?" I like the angle and the attempt at framing between the trees. The colors ar OK. But the grass reeds...

[mappleby]

That's it... I agree with what everyone is saying... My wife really like this image but it just wasn't sitting well with me but I could place what it was.

I think I missed the mark on what I was trying to achieve. I wanted to create an image that was looking thru the reeds at the light house... I have seen that type of image before but I am not sure how I could have done that with this image... Any suggestions?

[Murtasma]

Why not let them compliment each other like this?

[mappleby]

I like your image however it is not quite what I had in mind. I will see if I can find a picture with style the I was trying to achieve.

[Jamesc359]

I think I get what you were trying to achieve, but in order to have done that you'd need a small clearing in the reeds, so you're peeking through them to see the lighthouse. It would also help if you had more reeds to the right, and a smaller aperture.

[Murtasma]

I've worked with reeds a lot and if your attempting to take a picture between the reeds framing the lighthouse in the middle and having the reeds in focus would be hard with out external lighting on the scene. To get the depth of feild you would need for an image like that you would be shooting somewhere around F22 to get everything in focus. Then you will need to adjust your iso accordingly probably up to as high as you can get. When you take the picture look for movement in the reeds. If your all the way up in your iso and the reeds are not sharp because of movement you will need to add more light to the reeds with a refelector or a soft difused light.

That's the perfect senerio but every place is diffrent and odds are other reeds would be in the way when you shoot between two of them in that case theres nothing you can do besides cut the reeds down which should not be done or go for a diffrent composition which should be done if you dont have external lighting or a difuser for your flash or some other method to cast light onto the reeds.

[Murtasma]

oh almost forgot you could also try focus stacking which in a nutshell would happen like this.

Shoot at like F 5.6 - F 8 and focus on the reeds set your iso to something so movement does not affect the sharpness of the reeds and take the picture.

Then go up to to the approiate F stop for the depth of feild you wish in the lighthouse and take the picture.

Now you will need to combine the two images with a focus stacking program or do it manually by masking in photoshop which is what I do.