Help with "poor lighting" on B&W composition

[PhysioDave]

Hi,

I have recently attempted to work with Photoshop CS5 to edit this photo of the Piazza San Marco, with the emphasis on the venetian glass in the street lights. However, in submitting it as part of a portfolio to a stock photo site, it was commented that the image had "poor or uneven lighting, or shadows. White balance may be incorrect".

I do not have a lot of experience working with black and white so I would love to get some advice on improvements to the lighting of this photo - should I lighten the dark spots in the sky and on the building on the left, or darken the white bits on the top of the bell tower?

EXIF:
Nikon D90
Focal length: 18mm
Aperture: f/10
Shutter: 1/1600
ISO 400
Nil exposure bias

Edited with Photoshop CS5 using magnetic lasso tool around lights, inverting selection then clicking black and white for automatic black and white. Changed colour balance and hue saturation to lighted venetian lights glass colour.

[milosh]

I would just tone down the white parts of the bell tower a bit. Also, you should always aim to use the lowest ISO setting on your camera, because of image quality (noise). You could have shot this at ISO 100 and 1/400.

[Krusty79]

It looks to me like you took this shot in the middle of the day, which is going to give you the harsh lighting with very bright and very dark areas. Instead of PPing this shot, I would go back and reshoot it in the golden hours. If that's not possible, hopefully you shot RAW and can make an exposure blend to tone down the bright spots.

Also, if your subject is the tower, I don't know if including the building on the right is helping. There is something else that struck me as slightly odd about the shot and I think that is because I can't see anything down at the street level. Were there distractions down there you wanted to keep out of the frame? If not, I find myself wanting to see what's going on down there.