First attempt at a building

Just realized that the title of the thread souns quite boring. Anyway as it says, this is my first real building shot. A little bit of PP involved the sky is real, just would like some general opinions, good or bad. I would like to have not cropped off the corners of the church but if I moved any further back there would have been a big tree left and right.

Cheers

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

Right in the center of the clouds at the top it gets very hot. I find it a bit distracting, personally. Also, it may just be my monitor (it's not all that amazing), but the roof seems a bit grainy.

Just a question, but did you get shots of it from any other angles?

Overall it's not terrible, although cropping some of the sky out would put more focus on the building itself, plus at least a good chunk of that hot spot in the clouds would be taken care of (although that may be my monitor, as well).

Neat image. The blown out sky can easily be fixed with some selective cloud cloning. And the distortion can be corrected with a little more distortion in the other direction - both fairly easy fixes in Photoshop.

Eyes are drawn by top blown out part of cloud. Instead of cropping it need to be fixed in PP. Also a person near to the church would have given eyes to rest there.

Thanks for lookimg and the comments.

With the distortion, m eyes are not trained that well. It was shot at17mm, in what direction do I need to correct the distortion.

The clouds are hot in the centre. For me that is what attracted me, looking at the heavens opening above the church, however I will try cleaning up the sky a little to see how it looks.

Maybe try standing further away and zooming in (i.e. use a longer focal length than 17mm) - this will help reduce/remove the distortion.

I know it's not always possible to move further away but, if you can, do it.. Same for group shots as well - move further away so the group isn't distorted with flat looking people on the edge of your shot. You'll get way less distortion at 100mm if you can move that far back.

The church steeple should be vertical, as should the sides of the building. A quick search of the net found this - http://www.lonestardig​ital.com/perspective_c​orrection.htm

thanks for all your help.now the distortion is killing me, i will fix ittonight and repost.

loydal, thanks, yeah in this shot I was as far back as I could be, but thanks for the help!

cheers

Well, the trees might have provided a good frame for the building. The road and the branches of the tree on the left look blue on my monitor. I have a general objection to wide angle building shots that warp vertical lines to lean into the frame. It doesn't look real to me. If you don't want to buy a tilt-shift lens, you can use a post processing perspective transforming tool. Other people are probably not as picky as I am about this point.

Same as others have said re: the bright spot...Lightroom would do a great job with this image

i persoanlly "get it" and love the concept, the shot seems a bit oversaturated and over sharpened in post. it looks like an hdr attempt, i would tone down the processing and go for a little more natural look on the building itself. i do think it can be a great concept/shot with a little tweaking. good job

I can cope with converging verticals on taller buldings. However, this one just seems a little weird.

I'm might sound harsh but the post processing is unnatural as well as being too bright and over done.

ok. redone with first comments. I have a toned down version I am working on too.

Cheers

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

whatever you did, looks better, in this version my eyes where drawn to the rhythm of the windows and doors immediately which helps focus the building as subject. i think its because the clouds arent so blown out, rather the message is still conveyed and the building is better balanced.