A few hours around Bristol Harbourside

went on a walk around this area on Tuesday and found it to be better than anticipated, subjects both old and modern. also had a couple of hours in the aquarium which i must say is a vast improvement on what was at the zoo

Harbourside Apartments



4 of the original dock cranes also "The Mathew" and the "Earl of Pembroke" both of which you can wander around but it was busy due to half term so another day for that



The last surviving Fairbairn steam crane, both boiler and engine housed inside



Nautical Bits



From under the legs of a giant



A glimpse of the Glitterball



Reflections in Millenium Square, the walls are constructed of polished stainless steel and normally have water running down them



Ferry Arriving



Self Titled



The Ball, the At-Britol planetarium is housed inside this, again another day

I love "Nautical Bits".
I like Reflections, also.
But, on Ferry Arriving, I'd clone out the bird as it's part cut off.

Nautical bits

+1

Like the way the ropes and also the vertical wooden bit between them are all at the same slight angle from the vertical. (Well, not quite, but ykwim).

I too love the Nautical bits, I am a sucker for old sailing stuff
Peace James

You've picked out plenty of interest around that area and have included many elements in the images for the eye to take in. I like the framing, viewpoints & angles which all give a very good sense of place.

You were fighting some very strong light from the sky there, and you've included plenty of it as well. This has meant that the overall exposures on the ground are low, with quite a bit of blocking in the shadow areas, and this has taken the sheen and depth off the colours a bit I think. My suggestion for PP would be to select off the skys, pull the highlights down on the skys (not anything else or you'll get rainclouds developing!), then inverse the selections and work on the ground alone, starting with some shadow lifting and small midtone in increase. A bit of extra saturation after that would do it.

thanks Nigel, unfortunately probably my weakest point with pp is selections and getting them to look right , i can always see the dividing line between what has and has not been done, never mastered "refine edge". in all honesty the colours are about as they were,at least on my monitor, i had spells of sunshine but mostly a bright but cloudy day and i am not a lover of over bright colours.
i have tried a couple but the ground was never as bright as the sky so equalising them does not look right to me

Looks like I'm in agreement with everyone else...Nautical Bits is the stand out image. Love it.

Looking again on a different monitor I change my mind about the skies - they all seem a good brightness so I'd keep them as they are. It may be just a case of a small brightness increase on some of the foregrounds would help.

Do you use Photoshop or Elements? Another approach that could make the dividing line smoother would be layer masking. This way you can control the blend between the ground and sky more precisely.

Create a levels adjustment layer, make your brightness adjustment, then use a black brush to paint over the sky on your top layer (the levels adjustment one). This painting will mask the over-bright sky you now have, revealing the correct sky under.

As you get nearer the edge you can reduce the brush size for more precision, and at the very dividing line you can change the brush opacity (toolbar control above the photo) to make it smoother. Good thing about masking is that if you go to far onto the ground you just change to a white brush and brush back your mistake.