Sheeps Head

not sure if this works - all C&C welcome!

It doesn't work for me but then I'm not that sold on landscapes at the best of times. I think the problem I see is that the water leaks out both sides and the house is too central. If it were landscape format then you could probably hold the water in one side, get the house off centre and still have enough of the sky and grass in.

Mike

Doesn't work for me either I'm afraid I don't mind the water, but for me the house is too small and too central, the horizon doesn't appear to be level, and the sky is too uninteresting to warrant showing so much of it. There's also some strange pale blue marks at the top edge of the frame.

Sorry, hate to join in the negativity but for me the composition does not work, it seems you are only looking a a part of the view because the edges appear cropped off. I do not believe in rules but in this case landscape would have been better and not portrait.

The house looks interesting and I hope you were able to take some shots of that as a main subject.

The haze can be resolved with a bit of effort in PS. What I would prefer to see on this image though is what most of the above members have mentioned, house too small in the middle, almost got lost in that huge foreground with the similar colours, landscape rather than portrait format, that probably would even bring the house closer and cut out a good part of the foreground that is doing nothing for me.

But I do like the blue of the water so you could make use of it and the sky and make the house a focal point

Would not wish to discourage people trying for something different sometimes that produces stunning results but it this case it does not quite work, but that is what you asked so I guess you had your doubts. As has been pointed out the scene is full of potential and I am sure you will unlock it.

Well I think its a very pleasant scene, not exactly an award winning shot but a good reminder of what I would have hoped was a good day out, I would certainly have taken a few shots here, landscape and portrait.

As for the coposition, yes the cottage would have been better placed on a third, (if you dont know what this is Ken just do a search for "rule of thirds")

Hi Folks, firstly, many thanks for all of your comments - all constructive and helpful!
My idea with the "portrait" landscape is to accentuate the vertical variation in the shot, because the variation in colours and textures is sometimes much less in a scene like this, which is comparatively feature less. But I hear you - it doesn't work.
Agree about the position of the house - it's as if I never heard of thirds!
The idea of the house being so far away was to portray it as only a component of the overall picture.
Gareth, I agree with you about the house - but it is 100 mls from where I live - next sunny weekend I'll make another trip!

Thanks again for taking the time to offer your comments!

Ken

I rather like the way you have framed this shot. I suspect that you did not think about the rule of thirds and instead went for symmetry around the horizontal centre, which is equally valid - the areas of sky and green grass balance, the areas of hills and yellow grass balance and you have the water in the middle. Portrait was the correct choice for this.

I think the picture does a good job of conveying the remoteness of the building's situation and in this respect is more successful than you might think from the other posts. If the building was larger in the frame, the viewer may well start to focus on the building rather than its location.

What could you have done to improve the picture from the shot you have? Crop out that pale blue at the very top. Try cropping in a smidge on the left and right so that the top of the water line has high contrast to the foothills even at the edges (there is something greyish rather than green on either side at the moment). I know that the top of the water is not the horizon and you may well have had the camera dead level, but have you tried levelling the water, to emphasise the geometry of the framing - does the building still look okay?

How could you have taken a better shot at that time? Maybe waited for a more initeresting cloud to occupy the middle of the sky? Maybe panned a bit to the right so that the house is on the left third line - I rather like the S-shaped curve made by the path which runs from the water past the buildings and which is continued by the mud in the grass. The shot doesn't look that sharp to me - are you sure you had a fast enough shutter for the focal length? Were you being buffetted by the wind?

I also think that, quite often, shots like this do not fulfill their potential when viewed so small. I suspect it will look a lot better when printed on A4.

Others have already pointed out the potential in this location, so if you make a trip back, maybe you want to be there at dawn or dusk. However, if you are like me and you examine every shot you take with the questions "How could I have made it better? Why isn't this shot worthy of a National Geographic cover?" then sometimes the answer is "actually, not a bad job, it's just not that great a subject/view", but don't let me put you off going back - with good light and some interesting clouds, there could be a stunning shot here and of course, if you have access, there are all the shots with the building as subject, filling much more of the frame.

Derek.

I had a play with this shot and feel there is something almost there. I cropped a bit off the bottom and the right hand side and straightened the horizon, and then tried to introduce a little more saturation/contrast into the sky to bring out the cloud.

If I had the chance to go back I would still try and keep the building small but zoom in a little bit. I'd use a tripod to ensure sharpness, a spirit level to get the horizon straight, and a polariser to bring out the colour/contrast in the sky (and try and choose a day with interesting cloud formations). Depending on the direction you are looking, I might try and pick a time of day which gave the most interesting light for the scene, usually dawn or dusk. A cold, clear, haze-free winter day would be ideal.

There are plenty of other pictures to be had closer into the building too, but this one is certainly not devoid of interest and is worth revisitng.

Best wishes, Kris.

Derek,

This is the sort of shot that appeals to me when I see it 'in the flesh' as it were. I take the shot and then afterwards don't understand why it didn't quite work. I think there is sometimes a fudging of the information that travels between brain and viewfinder.

I think this shot really works better if you crop half the sky and a quarter of the right side of the image. Leave the sheep in the image so that it is in the bottom right.

The composition is much better this way and it then lends itself to further post processing to tweak it here and there.

Hope this helps.

Derek, Kris and Coriander, many thanks for the feedback and advice.
This type of portrait landscape has always appealed to me for some reason, and your advice has me chomping at the bit to get out again - if it stops raining!

Ken