Beach house

[isis483]

whats up fellas. im new in photography. I bought a sony nex5 last month and want to improve on my skills. How is the composition on this picture. i want to say i took this picture an hour past sunset. Should i have not included the moon on the pic to make better composition? any comments will be greatly appreciated. i just want to get better. this site is awesome and have been reading tutorials and scott kelby books. thanks

Beach house | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

Sony Nex5N

Focal Length: 28mm
F 4.0
Shutter speed: 4 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure: +0

[4ndrew]

Hey there -

Compositionally, I don't think the shot is bad. I do think the moon is a bit distracting, like you hinted at.

Would it have been possible to include more of the reflection in the water? That may look cool too.

[isis483]

Thanks. I dont think i could have included more reflections because that was just a small puddle of water in front of the house. Thanks for the critique. hope more will come.

[Krusty79]

I like the moon in the shot. FYI, most lenses are sharpest around f/8, so you might have gotten more detail in the moon at that aperture. I don't know why you included all of those dark buildings on the right side of the shot. I think you could have left all of that out. I also would not recommend cutting off the reflection if you can help it.

[isis483]

Thanks for the advice. That night I was shooting on Shutter priority mode. I need to get better in selecting modes and maybe later on I can start experimenting with Manual mode. The reason for including the dark buildings to the right is I wanted to include the palm trees. I guess I was doing a little too much. Now i realized I should have focused on the subject.

[Krusty79]

There is some visual interest with the palm trees against the remnants of the sunset, but it is pretty far away from your subject (the house) and I think the image loses continuity.

For landscape shots where you don't have to worry about the shutter speed, a good place to start is aperture priority. I would suggest starting at f/11 and ISO 100. Let the shutter speed vary. Of course, shooting RAW and bracketing your shots is always helpful.

[Doug Sundseth]

I'm losing the silhouettes of the palm trees in the dark sky, and the long exposure is blowing out the moon badly.

That said, I like the composition, but I really wish you had taken this shot earlier in the evening. Shortly after sunset or before dawn you can expose for the lights of the house and still get color and detail in the sky (which should give you nice silhouettes of the palm trees, too.

If this is near you, you should be able to wait for a full moon (or the day before or after) and get the moonrise or moonset and a better light balance. Beware, though, you won't have much time at all, because the light changes quite quickly at that time of day.

[isis483]

Thanks, I will do exactly that on the next full moon.