Solar Paneled Roof

[Microcosm]

I'm looking for any kind of critique on this one. Be honest, say what you want.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3171/2784132249_811869cb57_o.jpg
The Adirondacks, NY

For the sky:
17mm
f/11
1/320
ISO 100

For the ground:
17mm
f/11
1/100
ISO 100

Camera resting on a rock.
I combined two exposures of the same scene, not for an hdr effect, because otherwise the sky was blown.

I can put up a larger size, if needed. Thanks

[Flo]

The sky is nice, but the rest of the photo isn't pulling me in.sorry.Maybe had been taken with the solar roof in the reflection of the water( taken from the other side it would be a little more interesting to me?

[KarlosDaJackal]

Composition...
Its not level enough to be counted level (its 2.4 degrees off). Its not at enough of an angle to be counted as an interesting angle (would need to be above 15 degrees).

The sky looks great, the roof looks great, I even like the reeds and water at the front, but the shadows are annoying me a little for some reason(could be rule of thirds accidentally falling on that area).

Overall I think you picked a good subject and had a good idea but it just didn't work out (happens to me all to often also)

My advise..
If you could go back and re-shoot it, I would focus on making a feature of the sky and the reflection of the sky in the solar panels. The water feature out front probably deserves a picture of its own also, again maybe a full frame filled with the reflection of the building in the lake

If you can't go back, just straighten it up a bit, crop it a bit differently (maybe show a little more at the front)

[Robert_Lay]

So far as I understand your concerns, the thing you are really interested in is the tonality or tonal range.

In my opinion, the highlights and mid tones are very good, but the shadows are blocked up and suffer from lack of detail.

You really need to study the histogram. It shows you that the highlights are in fact substantially blown out. It also shows you that the lower you go in value, the more pixels you have at that value until you get to solid black and that is piled up quite high.

Bottom line is that you really need true HDR processing in order to get the shots blended or merged properly. I would suggest than instead of a separation between the shots of just under 2 f-stops, you really need at least 3 f-stops difference in order to capture the overall brightness range, and of equal importance is that your lower exposure (for the sky) should be even less than you used above, because you've lost detail in the highlights.

[Microcosm]

Hm, thanks for all the advice so far. It's been quite helpful, I'll try to respond more and edit the photo as well when I get the chance. I do have a few more exposures from this position, so I'll go through and see what they look like.

[hawkeye60]

I did this pretty quickly in PS. Duped the background layer and set it to screen mode. Then masked out the sky portion.

[Robert_Lay]

I don't really see any significant improvement in the sky. However, the shadows and mid-tones are much better now, don't you think?

I'm a little worried that the water reflection is too bright in relation to the sky.

[Bill Boehme]

This might be a case of trying to put too many good things into a single image and diluting the end result. To me, the shot of the roof is too straight-on and it might be better to recompose the image and sacrifice some of the details in the scene for the purpose of reducing the number of points of interest. I think that doing this would present the opportunity for several images with different perspectives. Look for a composition that might feature the repetitive pattern of the solar panels.