Pier

[Birdland]

I quite like this photograph, but I want to know what I can do to improve this shot.

[Atlas88]

Thanks for sharing...I quite like this shot. I like the sense of innocence and wonder....

I'm by no means a professional, so take any advice I give with a healthy grain of salt...but to me the pole on the left in the immediate foreground distracts slightly from the girl. That said, I'm not sure if there's enough room to crop it from the image and retain the same perspective. The highlights in the water on the right are also blown..not sure what you could do with that either. (some critique eh?)

I've been playing around with the lomo effect quite a lot recently, perhaps this is a good candidate as well (irrespective of the pole/cropping etc).

Another idea might be to give the scene a sepia tone and 'burn' the edges slightly. Along with that I would retain the colour in the girls dress and desaturate it as to retain the girl as the focus.

[Birdland]

Thank you very much for that critique. I too have been wondering about the pole, but I wasn't really sure what to do with it. And I will check out sepia. Thanks.

Oh and this is a little off topic but I am creating my college portfolio and I was thinking about putting this one in, should I?

[xxpinballxx]

keeping that pole in the shot I would crop off to where its barely chopped off using it more as framing instead of a foreground subject.
I think a curves adjustment would help a bit. It seems a bit green tinted but that might the girls suit playing tricks with the eyes but the pier itself looks a bit too much on the green side....I know it happens naturally but i would cool the shot off a bit.
It is a nice shot and does have a good feeling to it.

[aetnajojo]

This is a very nice composition. The wooden platform on top and its poles below, in relation to the girl, is what makes it interesting.

I find it useful to assess composition by categorizing an image in one of three geometric or pattern buckets:

1. symmetric - where alignment to pattern is uniform and precise

2. flawed - where everything aligns to pattern but there is one item which is askew. The single askew item breaks the pattern and provides visual interest.

3. non-symmetric - where the forms are the same, but there is more chaos than order in the pattern

In categories 1 & 2, you do a lot of cropping to correct alignment to pattern. With #3 there is no need to crop, as the beauty is in the uneveness. (It is an imperfect world, and yes, there is beauty in imperfection). As I grew older, I tend to prefer #'s 2 & 3 more and more.

Your image falls in the third category. There are a lot of poles, but their positions are haphazard. In fact there are two kinds of poles, one kind is stouter than the other.

The challenge then is to draw the eye to the child, and then secondary, to the platform. The easiest way to achieve that is to replace the color of the child's clothing, with a bright color - like bright red, yellow or blue.

Another strategy is to apply selective contrasts - the area of the child versus its surroundings. We make the surrounding area darker than that of the child. Remember that increasing contrasts results in darker images, but in this case we also do not want to lose the texture of the wood completely.

In terms of brightness, your image has the following rough map, from 1 to 3 with 1 being the brightest:



The target is to apply selective contrast adjustments so that you will have the following brightness map:



We apply the contrast adjustments, but we make area #3 lighter, so that the wood texture is still visible and can be appreciated.

Here's the rough final version:

[Manila_Joe]

Well done aetnajojo! Excellent reply. You added what the original picture was in need of.

Excellent!

[FrankenPengie]

Thanks for that aetnajojo. That was a really awesome reply.

[Birdland]

Thank you so much. Your advice is going to help me a lot. I'm going to attempt this right now and see how it comes out. Thanks again!