Seoul's Olympic Bridge

[kstiltne]

I'm pretty new to the photography game, so I would appreciate any critiques of my photos.

I took this late in the evening, near sunset. Some have said it's too yellow, what do you think? How's the composition? Do the foreground elements take away from the picture or add to it?

[Doctor Atomo]

A very nice picture.
It is pretty yellow. Can you post a shot before Post Processing just so we can see what you did?

[doctorjames]

Before reading your text below the picture, the first thing I thought was 'wow thats yellow'. I dont like the colour balance at all im afraid.

Composition is good. I might have had a play with being tighter up against the bridge, which would make it a little more imposing. The plants in the foreground are a little uniform, and look slightly painted on... were these added post production?..

[kstiltne]

Thanks for the input guys, I'll play with the white balance a bit and see if I can cool the picture off a little. The plants in the front were actually a part of the picture. My photoshop skills haven't developed enough yet to add elements.

[kstiltne]

Here's a warmed up version...any better?

[doctorjames]

I hope you dont mind, but ive taken the liberty of adjusting your image to my taste in terms of colour balance.
Your repost with changed colour balance wasnt subtle enough for me, and infact you can see the colour cast in the river, which clearly isnt purple in real life
Ive made gentle but persistant changes in lightroom to produce this version. Ive hosted it on flickr, but will happily delete it should you wish (as its your shot and not mine). I felt it was probably easier to show you what I mean rather than say in words. The top one is your original, the bottom my change. Its still not perfect but just wanted you to know the gist of what I mean!

James

[doctorjames]

Its not perfect by a long shot, just a quick and dirty play with the colours, saturations and hues (along with some sharpening). If I was going to do it properly I would import the before and after into photoshop as layers, and by using masking bring the colour back through where important (the foreground particularly so the plants dont look dead!)

I wondered what you shot with and what you are using to post-process your shots? If you have the ability to shoot in RAW format its often worth taking, although you may need more memory cards to cope. RAW uses a lot more space per shot, as it has very little processing done to it on the camera, and makes changing things like colour balance much easier later on. It also allows you to pull back 'lost information' which would have been discarded by the camera when it converts to jpeg. This way if you have over or underexposed you can often correct for this more straightforwardly.

[kstiltne]

The picture was shot in the middle of February, so unfortunately, the plants actually are dead, and the river was covered with ice, so it was quite reflective of the sky.

Nikon D50
Nikkor 18-55mm
f/14 1/60 sec
ISO 200
shot in RAW format but converted to JPG

[EMansfield]

I see a lot of underexposed areas here and there. Moreover, colors (for both versions) look unnatural to me. In terms of composition, I would say it's a-okay. The plants make good foreground in this photo.

Cheers!

Eric Mansfield

[Doctor Atomo]

I kind of like kstiltne's "warmed up" version. If I hadn't seen the original yellow one I would have thought the colors were natural. The river is the same color as the sky in both shots. doctorjames' version just seems a little washed out and cold.