Improving Building Shots?

[lunathea]

I love architecture so I thought that I would really enjoy photographing random structures. So far though my photos have been subpar. For instance the photo below is of the locks in Marquette Michigan. The structure itself is incredible in real life. I can see some amazing night photos with the sun setting and the ships pulling in. However I was stuck with yet another grey boring day. I go between liking and hating this comp (however the picture of the whole thing looks incredibly bleh too) and I can't seem to bring up any creativity to help it out in post production. What would you do? Anything editing wise? How do you make your building/structure shots more interesting? What I wanted to get here was the feeling of how enormous this thing is but I feel like I failed. Thanks!

[lunathea]

I apparently failed at linking lol.

[IABoomer]

I had a little play with this in Lightroom. I've attached a screenshot showing the before and after with settings.

It looks to me like the camera might have metered more off the bright sky, leaving the detail underexposed and flat. As you can see, I bumped up the exposure and contrast, added some fill lighting to bring out some of the detail, then bumped up the blacks some to punch up the shadows a bit.

This might be a good candidate for an HDR treatment. I could also see stepping a bit more to your left and filling more of the frame with the structure. The sky on the left doesn't really add anything (even if it wasn't a bland day), and the change in angle could bring out more shapes and detail to the structure.

[Nicole]

I think part of the trick is knowing what to shoot when. What I mean by that is if it is.a grey, cloudy day, focus on details that will avoid including the sky. Save photos that need the sky for days with more interesting skies. It's a bit sucky for days when you want to get out and shoot but you may find you challenge yourself more and get better shots for it.