Best Photo Yet, But How Do I Make It Better

[vjhoward]

I took the attached shot on off the port bow of the Carnival Conquest at sunset. For first time, I feel I really captured what I was trying to capture in camera. I did a little post processing in Lightroom to clean up noise, lens correction...but in the end, I wanted to photo to be mostly what I captured. (One of my personal goals for the year is to become a much better photographer).

Please let me know what you might do different in the photo during capture (i.e. composition, exposure, etc) and what you might do different in post-processing. Do you think there is still too much noise in the sky and clouds? Are the colors OK? What about the luminance? Something else?

While I really do like the photo, I know there are different opinions and the only way I learn is by understanding different perspectives. Please provide you comments and thoughts...

EXIF: D300S, 18-200 lens, ISO 200, 18mm, f/10, 3 sec exposure

Link to picture on Flickr: Sunset on Carnival Conquest on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

[mwanafunzi]

I really like that the boat and the sky are well exposed. As far as I can tell there is no noise on the photo.

As for the composition there is something that does not sit too well with me. I am not sure what that is. maybe one of the other dps'ers will have better input.

[Aleix]

First of all nice pic.
My personal opinion regarding composition:

* The (shower?) pole is distracting. At least for me.
* What is the main element where you want the viewer's attention to focus on? To me it is not clear: on one hand there's a beautiful dusk sky. On the other there's the deck of a ship, which also looks neat with the lights.
* If the deck is the important part, my attention goes to the chair. You should however displace it a bit so that it is in one of the intersections of the rule of thirds, to give more strengt to it.
* I'd also crop slightly the sky, so that it just covers the upper 1/3 of the rule of thirds. The part to crop is quite dull (apart from the colour gradient), so luckily the more interesting part with clouds can be conserved.

Some crop ideas:

If the ship deck is the primary element of interest:


If the sky is (pity that the shower pole distracts in the middle zone):


Greetings

[Michael_2010]

It appears that you have pretty much nailed the technical aspects of your camera. Extremely high quality capture. It has a commercial appearance, if that is what you were going for. I kind of expect a guy to show up and sell me deck furniture or a hot tub.

[vjhoward]

Aleix - thanks so much for your comments and crop examples. Your crop and rule of thirds recommendations are spot on. This is probably the "not sit too well" comment that mwanafunzi had. I will do a crop as in your first example focusing on the chair.

My original perspective was that I really like the strength of the lines on the rails coming from bottom left to mid-right, then the upper railing pionting down to the horizon. I think the "ship deck crop" you demonstrated above let's me accomplish everything I wanted with the photo.

Thanks a million. Note: I will be putting another photo out later today with a tunnel created by shooting through the arm rest on a row of deck chairs. I would love your comments on that one too!

Victor.