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Derelict cottage – Co. Armagh
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I’m not really sure if this is the correct section to be posting in. The picture has the cottage as the subject….anyway, I digress.
This was taken in early autumn this year, close to Richhill, Co. Armagh. It is an old cottage that used to be lived in, but a newer modern farmhouse has been built close by and this is just used as storage now.
For a few weeks around the time I took this picture there was amazing light hitting heavy storm clouds day after day, especially in late afternoon. Many days as I drove home from work I wished I had my camera with me. Finally I had a day off and I went chasing the light. I ended up with a lot of crap because I hadn’t any particular subject scoped out in advance (note to self).
The sky blew out completely in the first few shots. So I metered on the sky and recomposed; now the cottage was a sillhouette. Balls. So that’s what an ND grad is for, I thought… I’d also heard about combining skys with foreground so I though, what the heck, I’ll give it a go. I did it handheld, which gave me a few headaches in photoshop, but it came together ok after much fiddling.
Anyway, I’m interested to hear some feedback on it. Particularly regarding composition because I find that’s where I’m weakest. Many thanks.
I like it Pete.
And considering the poor available light you’ve done very well. The is not huge amount wrong with
this from a compositional point of view; the main subject of your image is the derelict cottage, and that’s
exactly what we see here. It might have been improved a little had you moved further back so as to include
a little more foreground. The dead tree right of frame is a bit of a distraction (not too much)
but to crop it away wouldn’t make any sense as it comes far too close to the rear pitch of the roof.
There is only one thing that doesn’t quite sit right with this image: It’s not straight.
If you’re shooting a building on the diagonal, an important point to consider is that the true vertical of your shot
is more often than not going to be the corner of the structure that’s closest to you. Try rotating your image
clockwise a couple of degrees and see the difference it makes.
It’s a nice subject and one that might be worth revisiting in better light. Good work.Rob.
It looks good to me Pete, well spotted-
regarding the composition,
I like it, especially the crop line on the base,
and the shaky front of the house
though I’d be tempted to crop some tree, on the right-
To roughly balance the dark tone on the left.The glow in the sky is perhaps a bit strong,
and overall I’d be tempted to reduce saturation for a print,
but these are only my opinions and many will disagree.Good picture though-
j
Thanks for the very useful comments folks.
I have just rotated it about 2 degrees clockwise, and it improves it a lot. Thanks Rob. The cottage now seems to be planted more strongly in the frame.
Cheers JB for your comments also. I’m really not sure how the colour is coming across. I’m working on an ibook without a profiled monitor and have been getting really inconsistent results. It seems to look different in photoshop and then different in iphoto and different again when i load it up to the web, so something isn’t right. I’m going to get some sort of monitor profile doofer in the next month or two. I agree that the saturation is perhaps a little over done, and its bordering on that comic book/flickr style look. However I kinda like the surreal atmosphere that it creates.
I opened it in Photoshop and the colour changed completely-
I converted the profile to sRGB,
which is the profile you should be using for the web,
and this is what I got-
which is how it looks when I opened it in photoshopYup, that’s how it looks to me in Photoshop. I have no idea what is going on. I’ll have to look into it some more. Gah, its making my head hurt.
PeteMcD wrote:
Yup, that’s how it looks to me in Photoshop. I have no idea what is going on. I’ll have to look into it some more. Gah, its making my head hurt.
JB trained me with similar comments. Go to edit->colour profile and choose the one that says sRGB.
I really like this, I like the colour effect and simplicity. Kind of reminds me of the cibachrome print effect.
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