Critiques please

Just started working with post editing. Not sure where to start so all advice welcome. This is an old cabin in the San Juan mountains. Thank you.

I can't say much about the BW processing as it's not my thing. As for the composition, it feels cut off. The cabin is shoved over to the right and half the mountain is cut off. There's little that draws the eye on the left side. I think you own this subject a bit of experimentation on point of view and composition.

Thank you

Well there's your problem right there! Your cabin has no roof! Or at least it looks that way...Kidding aside, not a bad photo. I think the biggest foul is the composition, or more likely your focal length for this composition. If you were to take this with a telephoto you might be able to keep the cabin a proportionate size and still have a great landscape photo. You also might be able to shoot with a short lens but keep the cabin more centered in the frame. You were there so only you know the restrictions, everything else looks fine to my eye!

I like the b&w treatment/ conversion.

What bothers me is the merging lines of the left side of the cabin and the mountain, and then the log that is cross ways merging with the other mountain on the right. Plus the cabin corner is pretty dead center.

so asking yourself.. what is the subject? and your eye really wanders around, and doesn't really 'set' somewhere. With all the merges, I don't think you can fix this with a different crop, either.

I really think you did have a picture there, but more walking and looking was needed to find it. JMHO. Shifting a subject/focal point into one of the rule of third corners would have helped this. again, JMHO.

ksbal wrote in post #17641577
I like the b&w treatment/ conversion.

What bothers me is the merging lines of the left side of the cabin and the mountain, and then the log that is cross ways merging with the other mountain on the right. Plus the cabin corner is pretty dead center.

so asking yourself.. what is the subject? and your eye really wanders around, and doesn't really 'set' somewhere. With all the merges, I don't think you can fix this with a different crop, either.

I really think you did have a picture there, but more walking and looking was needed to find it. JMHO. Shifting a subject/focal point into one of the rule of third corners would have helped this. again, JMHO.

Ksbal, Thanks a lot, thats exactly what I was doing. I was taking pictures of my wife and some flowers when I wandered over the edge of the hill , looked back and thats what I saw so I tried to grab the cabin with the two mountains on each side. In my head I know what I wanted but I just didn't get it right. I think it would have been much better to focus on just trying to get one mountain in with it. I was below it shooting up...that had other concerns for me.

I think it is a little different and the composition intrigues me. I'm going to go against the grain and say that I like it. Sure you could have taken it in such a way that more people would think it is good, but that's what appeals without it looking 'unbalanced'.

It looks to me like you could have put a lot less thought into the composition and had a 'miss'. For instance the two trees on the far left are IMO quite important. As are the balancing dark areas in the clouds and mountains on the left and the cabin and the direction of the clouds.

As far as processing, I'm not sure I'd change much, if anything.

the image is kind of flat.

Take a look at the histogram, there are zero true whites outside of the mountains in the distant background. I would expect the clouds to be very close to white.

There is also almost no detail in the shadow area. I ran a quick curve for the highlights and then Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights for the shadows, and feel it came out pretty nice. I will post it if you want.

Left Handed Brisket wrote in post #17642882
the image is kind of flat.

Take a look at the histogram, there are zero true whites outside of the mountains in the distant background. I would expect the clouds to be very close to white.

There is also almost no detail in the shadow area. I ran a quick curve for the highlights and then Image > Adjustments > Shadows/Highlights for the shadows, and feel it came out pretty nice. I will post it if you want.

Sure please do. I don't have any post editing except for what came on my Mac. Like I said I'm very new to this. My next purchase will be Lightroom 6.

I agree that there could be more pure whites, after I replied the first time I noticed that. I get what ejenner is saying but I still think the cabin blocks too much of the mountains. It seems like you wanted to get both in the shot but neither complements the other in this case. To me it's either move closer for a nice cabin with the lines drawing through the image or back up to get a great landscape scene with a nice cabin to draw eyes to the foreground.

Truck3lt wrote in post #17643073
Sure please do. I don't have any post editing except for what came on my Mac. Like I said I'm very new to this. My next purchase will be Lightroom 6.

if you own a Canon camera you might want to try out their free DPP (Desktop Photo Professional) software. It is probably much more useful than iPhoto, but honestly i don't use either of them. Also, unless you are processing and needing to organize many, many photos, Adobe also offers Photoshop Elements that will, i think, provide more color correction tools than Lightroom. Again, i don't use either so do some research to make sure they fit your needs. I use Capture One to process and organize my RAW files, and full Photoshop for retouching.

so, keeping in mind all of this is subjective … I think that most people who have spent a lot of time looking at photos, whether they are their own or other's images, want to see a full range of tones (if that is what the original scene provided) but with at least some detail in both the whites and blacks. This goes for color or b/w images.

Below are the two adjustments I made. The first, Curves, brings the highlights up (brighter) and tries to maintain contrast throughout the rest of the image. The second (Shadows/Highlights) was done to bring out some detail in the shadow areas of the dark side of the cabin.

Notice in the image of the cabin below, I have included the Info palette and placed three targets (look close at the photo) with the Color Sampler Tool, each sample is numbered and it's value is shown in the Info palette.

Here are the original values for the sampled spots

1) 27
2) 97
3) 100

As you can see, the highlights moved down to 11, fairly bright but not pure white that might have destroyed detail. The local shadow contrast (difference between adjacent areas of the same value) went from 3 (100-97) to 10 (100-90). Depending on your monitor set-up these differences might not be noticeable OR might even make the image look worse if the highlights are blown out. Regardless, the numbers are all that really matter. Using just the numbers a seasoned color correction pro can correct colors on a black and white monitor.

i hope i have provided plenty for you to think about and work on, it's not the destination but the journey, right? Good luck, and let me know if you need clarification on anything.