Dawn of the communications era

[ebojorq]

Hi, everyone... one of my first photos submitted here.

I'm planning to get serious with photography and I want to check if I got what it takes, so, apart from the obvious noise and lack of focus in this shot (I'll get a DSLR soon), I want to know if the composition is appealing in this photo. Also, I would love to know what do you think about the light in the picture (I blew a jog session to get this picture at 5 am)

Thanks in advance!!

De Experimentos

Camera: Canon SD1000 point & shoot
Exposure: 1.6 sec
Focal length: 5.8 mm @ 2.8f
ISO 100

EDIT: I reviewed my post looking for some comments and realized that the questions weren't specific enough:
1) I want to know if the composition is appealing in this photo. If not, why not? what are the elements that I should be looking to get out? Are this elements fixable in PP? To what extent is it considered still photo and not "cheating",.. if that applies at all.
2) I would love to know what do you think about the light in the picture. Is there a way to improve by means of aperture, ISO or focal length? I've noticed that shorter exposure times render warmer colors when shooting with this kind of light, but I'd like to read another way to do this. Since by now I have only a PS it would help to know whether to set the camera on aperture, focus or shutter priority (I still have some degree of control but the darn thing is still "smart enough" to do things on its own will.

I hope this edit lead to a meaningful comment.

[4ndrew]

Hi there -

I like the tree in the foreground, and I like the colors of the sky; I think you've captured the warmth of these colors pretty well.

For me, the lit up building and the park bench are a bit of a distraction. I think that with too many contrasting objects in the frame, it becomes difficult to tell what the subject is supposed to be, and what to look at. Since you incorporated "communication" in the title, I assume you are going for the antenna. And I think that this works well for a subject.

IMHO, I think I would see if you could compose the shot to eliminate the building and bench. If that isn't possible, maybe you could PS them out. But if you really like how they add to the frame, then by all means don't listen to me! This is all subjective after all.

Addressing your question of how much PS yields cheating, here are my $0.02:

Make all attempts to compose the shot and capture the image the way you want without using PS to remove pieces, etc. If some post-processing needs to be done, well it needs to be done. But make your best effort to get the shot with the least amount of "shopping" as possible.

as

[BK553]

I think Andrew hit the nail on the head. The shot just has too much going on. there is no clear subject, and the crazy lines of the trees/buildings on the horizon are distracting. See if you can crop it so you have a clear subject and focus. Nice sky though

[Krusty79]

To add to the previous comments, I read in another post (LeeR's?) that your eye naturally goes to the lightest area of an image. In this case, it's that building in the foreground. The other white lights are distracting also because you want viewers to focus on the antenna and the nice sunrise colors you've captured.

It looks like you tried to include some foreground interest, which is good, but your P&S camera cannot expose it correctly. I don't think it will allow you to use a slow enough shutter speed. With this kind of stationary subject, you could shoot this in aperture priority or manual mode if you had a DSLR. A DSLR would also allow you to shoot in RAW, bracket your exposures and bump up the ISO.

[ebojorq]

Thank you all... the building below the tree was intended to be there... the white patch below the image is actually a gas tank and it wasn't on the original frame... until the neighbor turned the light on.

I'll crop the bright building on the right side and see how it works. Beside3s, I'll re-do the shot.

I will try also with the aperture priority to see how it turns out.

Thank you!!