Japanese Gazebo

[Trixrforkids]

Hello,
I have been lurking on this site for a couple weeks now and have decided to make a profile and upload my first picture. This is the first picture that I have taken and done a post production with. I bought my camera about 2 weeks ago. Any insight on my composition and some of the post production would be outstanding. This is (I think) the best I can do for now, as I am still learning. So I wanted a kind of base line I guess to see where I came from for later on. Thank you all for you insight and I’ll continue lurking. This shot was taken from my recent trip to Japan.
Camera- Canon EOS Rebel T2i
Mode- TV
Shutter Speed- 0.3
Aperture- 11
ISO Speed- 100
I was using a slower shutter speed to try to get a more “flowy” look from the waterfall. I don’t know if it really made a difference in this shot though. I also wasn’t using a tripod, but a tripod is inaccessible to me at the present time because I’m living on a ship haha.

[barabe]

Welcome to DPS,

You have a great camera in your hands to do some wonderfull work. I would love to see the picture much larger to better analyse it. The longer exposure is a nice touch to blurr the waterflow. The picture maight be a bit crowded to my taste, a tighter crop might work better. (just my 2 Cents for what it's worth)

[janakkpandya]

Great shot Trix. TFS

[Trixrforkids]

Hey, thanks for the input Barabe and Janakkpandya I loaded a larger image for you (i had to cut down the previous one to put on facebook ). I will deffinatly look into cropping it a bit more and see how that works out. i think i could take a little off the left side and the top a little bit i want to keep the gazebo in the right portion of the frame though. I dont want it to drift to the middle too much. And what do you think about the saturation and color? im worried it might be too much. thank you for the input!

[jxk]

I like your post production work - gives the photo an interesting effect. I think the photo needs straightening slightly. You may notice that the wall of the gazebo is not quite vertical. Good composition. Agree that a slightly tighter crop may improve it.

[marclex]

Neat shot. I agree about the crop

[Peggyjom]

Nice shot! I have the same Camera using the 18-135 lens. When they mentioned about the wall not being straight i scrolled up to see what lens you were using. I love the 18-135 but it tends to distort if I'm not careful. It might be a little saturated for me, but i do this with pictures I take look at them 3 months later and ask my self what the heck i was thinking. The water looks good for free han at such a slow speed. This is a great camera. Micheal Andrews has a great CD on all the function of it and a tone of great tricks with a lot of lens information for the rich and the poor a like, something for every pocketbook.
nice shot hope to see more!

[faeriegodess612]

agree with the crop. from the left side, to put the rock on the intersection of the bottom third and left third lines. looks just a TAD over saturated to me. i dont see the wall not being straight, i see what i call angle distortion. Like if u take a picture of a wall, the further points are going to bow downwards. Over all good picture. Welcome to DPS.

[Trixrforkids]

Thank you so much! I have messed with cropping the image and I agree it looks better. I will take a look at the wall being straight. I did use a straightening tool but I made sure the roof of the gazebo. I will have to try the wall and the roof to see which looks a bit better. And ill also look into the distortion as well. I believe I was using my 55-250 telephoto lens at this time. I was taking other shots and didn’t have time to change to my shorter lens.

[barabe]

The saturation works fine with me but the contrast is a bit too high for me. The fore ground of the picture ( fall , gazebo and rock ) all are very nice but the Trees in back look like a HDR gone wrong with too much contrast (maybe it is the compression of the picture that causes this)