Input Please

I love these shots, post processing using CS5.
(ps. it was very bright that day...tried to darken these a little)

It is hard to get a good balance when you have such as wide area between the highlights and the shadows. You have some blown highlights that you will never get any detail back in but they seem to be minimal and don't take away too much from the image.

Only you know what the exact colors were in the original scene. I have a feeling that you have bumped up the saturation a fair amount as the bricks seem to have too much of a dark yellow tint to them. This is the kind of shot that HDR lends itself to be effective on, providing it is done properly.

I like the first shot and if I would have done anything differently it would have been to be more towards the center of the hallway to get a more centered vanishing perspective. The great thing about photography is that it is subjective, what I like someone else won't but that doesn't make it a bad shot. It is all in the eye of the beholder.

You might have better luck on getting opinions on this shot if you posted in the critique forum.

In any situation like this you have to make a very important decision. You can't possibly expose both the bright sunny bits and the shaded areas correctly. So you have to decide which part will be incorrectly exposed. The best decision is almost always to protect the highlights, because once highlights are overexposed they are gone forever. A clipped (burned out) highlight will have the RGB values 255/255/255 which is featureless white. If you try to darken it you just get featureless grey, like the columns in the top photo which are now 217/217/217 and pretty ugly. Underexposed shady areas, however, still have detail in them and quite a bit can be done to lighten them to reveal that detail. Still, it does come at a price because you are pushing the limits of the camera's abilities. The price is noise, but noise can be lessened in editing. An additional price can be posterizing of the shadow tones (abrupt, instead of smooth, transitions between tones). This can be lessened if the editing is done on a RAW file rather than a jpg, and in general this sort of photo will always be better in RAW because RAW gives you an additional one stop of tonal range in the highlights. This means that if you expose so the highlights are just below clipping, all the other parts of the photo will receive an extra stop of exposure as well, which will make the brightening of the shadows easier.
The compositions and subjects are lovely, but the overexposure makes them missed opportunities. Still, every missed shot is a chance to learn.

ssim wrote in post #10852524
I would have done anything differently it would have been to be more towards the center of the hallway to get a more centered vanishing perspective.

You might have better luck on getting opinions on this shot if you posted in the critique forum.

Thanks Sheldon, I did try to centered the subject for the vanishing perspective, but it doesn't have the illusion of depth I was looking for in comparison to stand either right or left to captured the subject. Granted the columns seems to be wide enough apart in the second picture. When centered, they look like a wall with no separation. The bricks are actually light yellow(almost white) color. If you look at the second picture(above the windows), they are same color(except perhaps 2x lighter).

tzalman wrote in post #10852746
This can be lessened if the editing is done on a RAW file rather than a jpg, and in general this sort of photo will always be better in RAW because RAW gives you an additional one stop of tonal range in the highlights. This means that if you expose so the highlights are just below clipping, all the other parts of the photo will receive an extra stop of exposure as well, which will make the brightening of the shadows easier.
The compositions and subjects are lovely, but the overexposure makes them missed opportunities. Still, every missed shot is a chance to learn.

Thanks Elie for a very in depth review. I did shoot these in RAW as well, and as stated, the harsh lighting didn't help the subject. The original images are not too bad, but I was experimenting with HDR and perhaps it was a little far fetched.

Thanks you both for your input.
ps. How can we ask MOD to move this thread to Critique Corner?

PerfectTan wrote in post #10853292
...The original images are not too bad, but I was experimenting with HDR and perhaps it was a little far fetched.

...How can we ask MOD to move this thread to Critique Corner?

That was going to MY guess... HDR. If you want, you can post a link to the raw file so we can see what's possible.

Or click over to the actual HDR subsection for help with HDR technique.

PerfectTan wrote in post #10853292
ps. How can we ask MOD to move this thread to Critique Corner?

Use the report button.

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For the second picture, if you waited a little bit more for the monk to walk farther, I think the picture would feel more interesting. Just my thought.

I like them very much though.