Please critique these 3 shots

[Flagpole]

G'day!

I would dearly love if somebody would critique these 3 shots for me. They are all slightly different but I am looking at feedback on composition, exposure and processing (albeit very limited one mainly restricted to color correction, slight levels, horizon straightening, minor cloning out of some stray details, noise reduction and slight sharpening).

Shot 1
http://members.oztralia.com/~bfeldman/Favorites/122_2233corr_std.jpg

Shot 2
http://members.oztralia.com/~bfeldman/Favorites/122_2282corrbw_std.jpg

Shot 3
http://members.oztralia.com/~bfeldman/Favorites/125_2539corr_std.jpg

Thank you very much for any comments.

Flagpole
Sydney, Australia

[Meerkat17]

I like the composition of the first but feel that its possibly slightly overexposed also because it is predominantly very grey you need to boost the sky to giive it some extra interest, especially in the upper right.

The second one I like a lot and although the sky is not as dramatic as I would personally like to see I feel it works well - perhaps a little contrast masking to bring out some of the shadow detail in the shelter would help. You will find an action to do this for you, in these PS Actions http://www.geocities.com/kafuensis/ you will find one or two for Contrast Masking.

The last needs some sky other than that I find it a pleasing image which leads the eye into the picture but I find the "empty sky" slightly distracting.

Regards
David

[mkitson]

I am in general agreement with Meekat17 on all the shots. The first is a bit too flat and lacking in contrast. The same shot on a nice day would be good. The second is my favorite, but I find myself leaning to view as if it were straight, to my mind it is tilted a little too far. The 3rd - ditto to the last post.

[Vega$50]

It is hard to tell what you were going for in that first shot....I don't know if you want the skyline of the city as your subject or the really long supports for the bridge. Perhaps a more interesting shot would have been to either pull back some for a more panoramic shot, or get closer and shoot the support beams. The other two are correct on the colors...it looks like it was a hazy day and colors are kind of washed out....

Your second shot is great in concept, I like the angle, but the concrete curb in the lower left is a litte "hot". I also see a very dark figure sitting in the little shack and my eye is drawn to it immediately as I look down the photo. You may have planned this in your shot, but I find it a little distracting...

The 3rd shot is good also, but I would look to brighten those yellows and greens, and maybe the sky. You could probably do without half of that sky, and probably the cobblestone street on the bottom to the begining of the paved area on the right.

Keep up the good work...I hope it helps!

[Wrench]

I like the second shot, but I feel it's a bit dark. It may just be me but the shack looks too dark. I really like the angle. As for the third, I like the brightness of the colors but I too found the empty sky........not distracting, but out of place. I think it detracts a bit from the photo. The POV and colors are great.

[Flagpole]

Thank you all for you replies!

Shot 1 was shot from the stern of the river boat while cruising down Yarra River in Melbourne. What appealed to me was the fact that it fell into an easy "Rule-of-Thirds' category with concrete pillara and red on the bridge contrasting with the gray sky. Unfortunately I only had one shot at it from the boat and thats the best I could manage. In fact original shot was fairly heavily underexposed and not overexposed :) You can see the original corrected version here:
http://members.oztralia.com/~bfeldman/GOR/boltebridge.htm
The flatness you see is more due to post-processing. I haven't tried playing with contrast though I can do a mask for a sky to make it more dramatic but it would fall into my category of "doctored" images. I do have slightly other angles but I felt this was the only one that captured the bridge in good details.

Shot 2 was shot on the same day which was overcast and miserable. Thanks David for suggestions to play with shadows in the shelter. In fact there is quite a lot of details in there and I probably end up using Shadow&Highlight on separate layer mask with soft low opacity brush to slowly build up the layers of contrast. It does make a subtle difference to overall look and softens the harsh shadow. The angle came as a result of trying to get a very small aperature shot which would combine both the pier and the shelter. I wanted a portrait shot as it would draw the gaze towards the end of the pier but the only way to get all the elements to fit in the rectangle was to tilt the camera. Now mentally I find that you would rotate the picture anyway but at this angle I was able to get more details into the shot. I agree theat low-left is slightly overbearing and I do not like the fisherman or crowds at the end of pier but again it was a one only shot as my other travelling companion wasn't particularly impressed with my photographic skills :D

Shot 3 was fairly difficult for me to get right cause while I tried to get composition right (golden "S-shaped curve path which always excites the visual senses) I can't remember what I've done with exposure. The EXIF tells me I spot-metered it and I seem to recall that I did it off the white post in the front. I then underexposed it by 2/3 stop. However I still got a blown out sky. Funnily enough it looked exatly like that. See this gallery http://members.oztralia.com/~bfeldman/GOR/index.htm and look at Flagstaff pictures to see what the sky looked like. Funny enough behind me it was completely blue :) I could have perhaps bracketed the exposure and then blended the 2 shots but for really annoying reason of my 1gb CF card not arriving in time I could only take picture in jpegs and could not afford to keep 3 versions of the same picture as I was running out of space :oops:

Thanks a lot for kind replies. It gives me a good base for some further touch-up before I finally decide to get these printed on large size to hang in my room. I really, really appreciate these.

Thanks again and Happy New Year to you all,

Flagpole
Sydney, Australia