Buckingham Fauntain Sunset

[Bulgart]

Hello Everyone I took this shot of the Buckingham Fauntain in Chicago this week. It was my first time taking a sunset picture, and since I am still new to photography I would really appreciate your critique. The only post processing I've done is auto tone curve and touched the sharpness. I like the way the shot came out, but I would like to know if there is an another mistake or something I should do differently next time. Thank you.

Exif:
Exposure 0.6
Aperture f/22.0
Focal Length 28 mm
ISO Speed 100

[jankcl]

I love the clear focus you have on the fountain. I'm certainly no pro photographer by any means, perhaps if the fountain is what you want to be the focus of the shot, the background can be a bit more blurred with a small fstop? so that the background buildings can be less distracting from the fountain.

just my 2 cents

Janice

[Bulgart]

Janice, thank you for the reply. I wish I tried different f stops, I don't know why I was thinking that I should try at different speeds and keep a low aperture. I also wish I tried different ISOs.

[IABoomer]

I like the overall effect. You've caught some interesting lighting in the sky and how it colors the world below, which is good.

You say it's a shot of the fountain, but with an f/22, you've got a very deep depth of field which shows detail clear back to the "Essex" hotel sign in the background. It's not necessarily bad. I love being in Chicago and seeing the fountain in the context of its location works for me. There's also a lot of sky, and with the sky being bright, it draws your eye there and away from the fountain. Thankfully, there's detail in the light and darker clouds, so I'm not bored by where my eye is drawn, just distracted from the stated subject.

The framing is close. The camera might be tilted slightly to the left which gives the buildings a slight lean to the right. If your camera has gridlines in the viewfinder, you could use them to make sure the verticals are straight, or use the rotate/lens correction tool in post processing to straighten things out. You've also cropped off the right edge of the fountain. You've got room to the left to let things slide if you recomposed to make sure you have all the fountain detail in the image.

I pulled your pic into Lightroom and with a bit of fill light, some contrast, and a clarity adjustment, the fountain really popped more into the foreground without losing the moody pink sky. I'm not sure what you're using to process the images, but feel free to play with some things and see what happens. You might stumble upon something that better matches your vision of the scene.

I added my edit. I'll remove it if you want.

[Bulgart]

IABoomer thank you very much for your critique and taking your time to edit it and show me how it could be better. I just intalled Lightroom yesterday and I used it to fix some of the tilt on the buildings, I guess I hadn't fixed it all the way. It really bothered me how the fountain wasnt very bright, I really like your edit. On my off day I will spend few hours learning Lightroom, hopefully I will be able to create a similar effect. I really wanted all of the buildings to be pretty sharp, so is my title wrong, or is my thinking wrong?

[IABoomer]

I might have been a bit too literal in the interpretation of your title. I suppose "Chicago sunset from Buckingham Fountain" might better imply that your intent was to show the whole scene, not just one aspect of it, but really, it's probably splitting hairs.

Have a good time learning Lightroom. It's a phenomenal piece of software.

[Bulgart]

I think I like this