Night shooting of the eye

[AngeloDefensor]

Hello guys, I would like to improve my night photography by your constructive feedbacks. I wanted to know if my white balance is okay in this image. Is my composition okay? Is there anything I could improve in this image?

Exif data
Camera Canon EOS 500D
Exposure Bulb, 60 seconds
Aperture f/18.0
Focal Length 24 mm
ISO Speed 100
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire
Lens: 24-70mm f/2.8
Time of day: 2130hrs.

[3bayjunkie]

Hey thats cool! I was just reading about this exact type of shot in Understanding Exposure.

[doctorjames]

Well I am opening a can of worms here I suppose. I have not taken part in this forum (by choice) for almost exactly a year now because of various issue with the response to questions critique and the assignments... I do hope this place has changed a little!

Right, back to matters in hand, the critique.

I LOVE night photography. This has the workings of a cracking shot indeed. Please take my comments as suggestions only, and not what is 'right' or 'correct' e.t.c. It is important to remember that people give their opinions on here, and opinions cannot be right or wrong.


Good points:

Great demonstration of motion in the 'eye' (for those who are not uk residents the big wheel structure is the london eye).

Nice shooting angle to give the eye a 3d perspective. It would have been all too easy to have made the eye appear circular, completely ruining the lovely effect of motion you have here.

The exposure is just long enough but not too long for you to capture that motion. I do wonder what a shorter exposure would have looked like though....


Bad points:

Sky is noisy - (well at least it looks that way on my monitor at work). I am not sure how much post processing you have done, but it looks like the black/dark levels have been increased if that makes sense. It may of course just be secondary to the long exposure.

Due to the differing light sources used to light the buildings and the eye, the colour balance looks a little 'odd'.

The Crop is very safe. Nothing wrong with safe, but I think you need to make the photo 'pop' or 'snap' or whatever you want to call it a little more. The foreground contains little of interest to me and the river Thames is smoothed over because of the long exposure.

Suggestions:

Try sorting the levels sky wise in post process to get it a little less noisy.

What happens if you desaturate the image?... monochrome/B+W might look awesome here... Colour balance is always difficult if you are dealing with multiple, strong, and differing temperature light sources. I dont generally like selective desaturation.... but you could try cutting back on the yellow just to tone things down a little.

How about a much tighter crop. you can keep to the rule of thirds if you wish, cut almost all of the foreground, and put the centre of the eye on the bottom/left 3rd line. I think that would make the eye jump out quite strongly, and really pull your eyes in.

Feel free to ask any questions, and critique my critique as appropriate Please do be polite though, and not make me walk away from the forums again through frustration

James

[AngeloDefensor]

thanks for your suggestions James. I am not sure why I got some noises, with iso of 100. Darker top most of the sky due to graduated ND filter. Shall I use anti-noise software? I just did less of processing apart from sharpening. So do I need to desaturate the colour? is it too much?

[doctorjames]

Noise can often be an issue with long exposure shots, especially in my experience if you try to sharpen them. I rarely apply sharpening in PP. Did you shoot to jpeg on camera or RAW?

"so do I need to desaturate"

Well like I said, opinion is opinion. There is no need to do anything to it if you do not think it will improve things. I would do several things, as I outlined. If you would like me to I will happily show you what I have in mind and the steps to get there if you want to email me the original image. Send me a PM with your email address in if you would like me to do that. I use lightroom (now version 3) almost exclusively now, without resorting to photoshop. What are you using for PP?

[AngeloDefensor]

James i usually shoot using raw. unfortunately I lost the raw file..im using cs5 photoshop. I will message u the file. thanks

[doctorjames]

Ok, please pm me and I will give you my email address. Please send me the closest thing you have to an original off camera image.

[autofocus]

I do agree with much of what the good doctor said above, however, I do feel the blue and yellow light compliment each other. I've included a tighter crop, and again agree with Doc that it makes a better composition. Not a real bad noise problem in the sky, and easily fixed in PS Filters, noise reduction. Finished with a High Pass layer set to soft light. Hope you don't mind my work on your photo...easily removed if you'd like me to.


the eye by vmontalbano, on Flickr