caught a little surprise, but is it good or bad?

[Wolfsburg]

This shot is my best attempt to create an overall decent picture in full manual. Its not eye popping I know, thats why Im here. This shot has not been edited in any way except a minor crop. I want input on what you guys would have done differently to create a better photograph. I want input on how I might have caught a deeper blue sky, or captured the color better on the purple flowers. Tell me what you think of the cyclist I caught on accident. Is he a distraction with that Honda right behind him? Or do they provide nice contrast? Please go nuts I need to improve here,

EXIF


Camera: Canon EOS REBEL T1i
F-stop: f/9
Shutter: 1/400
Iso: 100
Focal Length: 38mm
Full Manual
Taken at 1:40pm

[nswphotos]

It came out great> I'm sure if you had it in Auto it would have chosen similar settings. Composition is up to you and what you’re trying to achieve! The manual side of things helps me manipulate the camera & alter the composition to suit my requirements at the time, i.e. DOF you might have wanted the traffic in focus and not the building so play around with the Aperture f/stops. Or you might have wanted the traffic zooming past in a blur and the building sharp in focus by lowering the shutter ECT. There are so many ways in which we can change the settings &/or your perspective to offer something different. That’s the art of manual. I think the blue sky is already quite blue, You can change your white balance settings on the camera to cloudy day for instance to get colours more saturated, A lot of the colours I sort out in Photoshop afterwards in a raw state, so for me it's a low priority. Overall great shot, I would have dropped the shutter speed, sat it on a tri pod and liked to have had the bike and car whooshing past.

[SwissJon]

Ok, your settings are fine, your camera took a correctly exposed photograph..

Now you need to decide what you want to do with the ultrafine control you have of your camera.

Like NSWPhotos said, you could alter the speed to get the cyclist with some motion blur. You could set the aperture so the depth of field only shows the building in focus. Maybe you deliberately wanted to under-expose the picture because there were highlights that were washing out?

Now you know your camera isn't going to explode just because it's set to manual, you need to decide why you took it out of Priority mode and see what effects you can create. It's a really good feeling when you break free of the constraints of the camera and decide things for youself. A steep learning curve because there's more things to think about when you're doing it.. But try to get some idea of the kind of things you want to do with this new found control.. It's a bit boring to take the camera off priotiry mode just to always leave the settings exactly as they would be in Priority mode.

best of luck.. Welcome to the manual club

[dlambert]

I think the biggest problem with both the cyclist and the Honda are that they're not all in the frame. They look like they were in the way, rather than intentionally being in the shot, if that makes any sense.

[Krusty79]

I agree with dlambert. Having the cyclist and car cut off makes this look more like a spontaneous snapshot instead of a planned composition. Your exposure looks fine, but you'll have to decide if the objects in the foreground support your subject or distract from it. In this case, even if the cyclist and car were not cut off, I don't see how they support the subject when it is a building. I could see how one of them could support the subject if they were headed towards it.

Try a circular polarizer for the deep blue sky. It is most effective at a 90 degree angle to the sun, but you sometimes get a gradient in the sky on wide angle shots.

[SwissJon]

Originally Posted by Krusty79

.... I could see how one of them could support the subject if they were headed towards it...

It's always better to have your subjects entering a frame than exiting it.. Unless that's the point of the picture.. To highlight a fire escape or something.. The picture would have been much stronger with the car or cyclist on the left hand side.

[Wolfsburg]

I see what you guys mean about the cyclist being a distraction. I already thought he was, but it never occurred to me that if I was able to catch him when he was riding into the frame, instead of out of it, that I could have captured a better photograph. Im going to look out for that in the future. Im going to look into those circular polarizers as well. Thanks all you guys for taking the time to share your input, its all good advise. Very much appreciated.

Until the next critique..

Wolfsburg