Graue Mill

[Bigguy88]

This is a shot of a small man made dam I took a while back. I just got into digital photography a couple of months ago and I have almost NO idea how to do any image editing. I managed to figure out what some of the tools do but I don't think this shot POPS the way I saw it when I took it. Which sucks because I sat on the edge of this awful smelling sewage creek for two hours waiting for the right light. Any tips on how I can edit this would be nice. I have access to Adobe Lightroom from a friend

[Murtasma]

I see you shot this at F36 I believe with iso 100.

First thing I would do next time is make sure the image is level. You can try to level it now but you will end up cropping to much of the top off I believe.

Do you have any netural denstiy filters? These work great for increasing you exposer time. You may also want to try taking the image closer to sunset so there is less light to help blur the water a little better in the forground. I think the compostion is nice except I would straighten the image next time.

Keep up the good work

[FrankenPengie]

I would adjust levels to brighten it a bit, and bump up the contrast.

In regards the the leveling recommendation, this looks to me like it was taken with the camera level. The image is falling away from you and there are three lines to consider. The top of the dam is above your head angling down as it falls away, the bottom of the dam is below your head angling up as it falls away, and the water is falling naturally downward. Leveling the top of the dam would screw up the other two lines. I don't much believe perspective adjustments are often good - it goes against nature. Very few lines are perfectly perpendicular, horizontal or vertical.