Monastery in the Mist

[christiansen]

I am new to photography and I am looking for some feed back. I took this picture of a Monastery by the beach. What I am looking for, is feed back on the composition, conversion to black and white and the overall quality of the image. Any feed back is appreciated.

Thank you!

Shauna

Nikon D40
F-stop f/5.6
Exposure time 1/800 sec
ISO-400
focal length 200mm

[IABoomer]

The mods will ask for basic EXIF data (shutter speed, ISO, focal length, aperture) with critique posts. You can get these from the file properties in Windows, the file info on OS X, the metadata in Lightroom, etc.

In this case, we're looking at:

Nikon D40
1/800 sec
f/5.6
200mm focal length
ISO 400

I think the composition is interesting. You've offset the building so it's not dead center, which is usually a good thing. You've captured the hazy mist, which is nice. The focus/sharpness seems to be good.

Conversion-wise, I think there's some room to push things. You could bump up the contrast and get more separation between the blacks and whites and leave less gray area. The other thing that immediately jumps out is the sky looks to have picked up some JPEG artifacts.

If you shot this in JPEG, there might not be much you could do to smooth things up. If you're working from a RAW NEF file, you can probably use a little noise reduction to smooth out the transitions in the sky, bump the contrast, add a little clarity (midtone contrast) and sharpen up the building edges a bit.

All in all, I think it's a good start, and welcome to the forum.

[christiansen]

Thank you for your feedback. The picture was shot in jpeg, but I will definitely try to see if I can smooth the sky. I had noticed the artifacts as well, but wasn't sure what to do about them. I will definitely look into shooting in RAW, I have read a little on the subject.

Thanks again!

[milosh]

I like this composition, it's interesting. The left tree is drawing attention a bit, but that's not so bad. There's a lot of room to visually explore this frame. I like the b&w conversion, although I find the top part a bit weird looking, grainy. I have a feeling that the whole photo is slightly tilted to the left, but that's probably just me.

[christiansen]

Thank you...I felt the top of the picture to be weird looking as well and wasn't sure how to try to remedy the grainy feel. It seemed the more I played with the contrast the worse it got. I am going to try to play around with the image in photo shop a little more and see if I can clear up the image.

Thanks again!