Rats Restaurant

[younus22in]

I shot this picture in front of the Rats restaurant at the Grounds of Sculpture in NJ. It wasn't a sunny day, but, the sky was bright (light gray color, not blue) and I had only the ND4 and a polarizer on me. I wanted a long exposure to get the silky water effect. There was quite a bit of wind and some of the trees were moving. I know it will be a good capture of movement, so, I went with it. It finally turned out to be a painting like picture. I post processed a bit to make it like this. Please critique on composition and anything I could have done better to make this a much more interesting picture.



Canon Rebel T2i
Lens: EF-S 18-55mm
Focal Length: 32mm
Mode: Aperture priority
Aperture value: f25
Exposure: 3.2 sec
Flash used: No
Tripod: Yes
Filters: ND4, CPL

Thanks!

[KongeTorsk]

I really enjoy this photo. The only thing I really see is some white halos around your buildings/trees against the sky. Aside from the obvious "Dude, where's my sky?" I like it.

[wal]

Nice warm colors, but those glowing edges are too much..

[Krusty79]

Unfortunately, the eye is naturally drawn to the brightest part of the image, which in this case is the blown out sky. Too bad you didn't have some color in the sky. I would go back and shoot this in the golden hours when you have less dynamic range to deal with.

Otherwise, it looks like a very scenic garden. The image is pretty busy, though. Can it be composed so that the building on the left is not visible? You might want to back off on the saturation also.

[graciousness]

This is overprocessed, hence the halos around objects. The colours are oversaturated, too, although I know this is done on purpose.

It actually hurts my eyes looking at this photo because it's blurry. I think I would just go back to this place when the conditions are better for long exposure shots - sky with nice clouds, no wind, early morning or late afternoon for better golden colours that you wanted to achieve.

I do know what you are trying to achieve and it's great practice doing this. So keep trying and one of these days, you will get it all so right it's going to be stunning.

[crockny]

This is a great subject and would be well composed with an interesting sky ... however with an uninteresting sky perhaps it would have worked if you included less sky and more of the water below? I agree that it's oversaturated now ... very nice use of curves and smooth water ...

[shruggy63]

Why the desire for 'smooth' water? What's wrong with water that looks likes water? If you'd have shot with a faster shutter speed you wouldn't have the wind blur in the trees?
I like the scene & compo though.