church shots

hi
here are two church photos
comments please
neil
[IMG]http://i676.photobucket.com/albums/vv123/gtis/IMGP0102.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i676.photobucket.com/albums/vv123/gtis/IMGP0104.jpg[/IMG]

Sky is completely blown on the first one.

The interior shot is nicely exposed but the composition could have been improved. If you're going for the central composition then you need to make sure you are standing dead centre & holding the camera level.

Nice

One curiosity though - the exif data says the second picture was taken atF3.5. To my fairly inexperienced eye, the dof is remarkable for that large an apperture.

The interior shot is much better than the exterior one. The exterior shot has a bland sky and converging verticals on the building. It gives us little idea of the overall structure, so I think a different viewpoint would probably be better.

The interior shot is better balanced and shows us what we need to see much better. It is leaning to the right, which is easily corrected, but is a basically sound image.

Oggy, you failed to look at the focal length, DoF would still be good wide open on an 18mm lens

Oops! sorry forgot to comment on the pics as well, the weather wasn't really on your side for exterior shots, OK for the interior though, I agree with the other comments.

hi
thanks for the comments
yes the weather was bad just
started to rain
neil

Prefer the inside shot , lovely colours .

Agree with the others - inside photo is best. The lighting and DOF is good.

John

As everyone has said, inside shot much nicer. I have found that using a little hotshoe mounted spirit level helps hugely when setting up this sort of photo. Some tripod heads have built in spirit levels.

With outside shots, don't be afraid to get everything level then crop a big slice off the bottom, unless you can find something eye-catching to fill the foreground such as spring flowers or interesting tombs.

Cheers, Kris.

hi
thanks again both shots
are handhald
neil

sorry forgot to ask
whats the cure for blown skies
neil

Take some photos of interesting skies that you can place in your photo instead of the blown one. Cheating but it can be effective.

Love the warm colour of the second shot; it is a shame that they stick those huge black speakers on those beautiful columns. Composition is not as I would have chosen but that is really for the photographer to decide.

The first is spoiled by the sky, and, my hobby horse, it does not look quite straight, if you are into PS you could improve the sky but best way would be to replace it altogether, think the large dull window do little to attract the viewer either, one could also improve them in editing but may be you feel that would be too much work, sorry, 'tis only my opinion and if you think different then ignore me. The shots taken should be taken to please the photographer first and foremost so it my opinion is just that my opinion.

Expose to the right, i.e. check the histogram and make sure that there is nothing beyond the right hand edge. The photo overall may look horribly dark and under-exposed. Then use something like CS3's shadow-highlight tool to bring the shadows back. If you overdo it, however, it will look noisy. In extreme cases you might have to use a HDR (high dynamic range) program which essentially sandwiches several exposures of the same photo together.

Best wishes, Kris.

Mine too, hence the spirit level comment. You cannot beat using a tripod for these sorts of photos.