Photo critiques please..

Last night i captured this image at dusk.
After a bit of playing about with levels, i’ve got a couple results i’m quite pleased with.

But which of the images, do you think works best?

Any other comments welcome, good or bad.

S

First cropping, to concentrate on the main subjects within the image.

A more panoramic crop, with levels raised to warm the image.

Somewhere between the two, with a more natural(is it was look)

It’s between the first two for me.

Don’t like the third one.

EDIT: have now settled on the first. I don’t like what’s going on on the RHS of the second.

there’ll be some experts along in a minute to give you the definitive answer..
but in my opinion it’s going to depend what you want to convey..

you can make an image colder, warmer, friendlier or more foreboding but I’m not sure that you can necessarily make it ‘better’

First one, but it needs cropping like #2. Down to personal preference I guess..

First one for me. It just looks right.

Top one. Looks more natural and the figures stand out better. 🙂

First one here as well.

I like the cooler colours, plus the crops lose the path which leads the eye into the figures, then across to whatever that roofed structure is.

First one, although it looks like it’s falling a little to the left.

Number 2. If you crop it from the left hand side of the light,so you can see the 2 trees to the right of the pavillion it will be better. It has something about it that looks like a painting.

I would put the barn thingy more to the bottom right, and add more sky to the picture, personally. Sunsets are all about sky for me.

It’s a bit hard to know what to focus on though – riders, barn or building… hmm.. confusing.

I would like to see the first colour scheme but cropped as bobby suggested.

Of the 3 I prefer the second one too.

The first image is the strongest of the three in my view. I’d crop out that little overhang of trees at the left, though.

First one, once you’ve photo shopped the nuclear power plant out.

Down to personal preference I guess..

– yup!

for me, crop image #1 in not quite as tight as tight as #2 then make it B+W…
but, that’s how I see the photograph, not how you see it 🙂

I think I like 1).

First one, but cropped in a bit more from the bottom – just enough to clear the darker patch of path that i can see at the bottom of the image.

Can we have a look at the pic as it came out of the camera?

fourcrossjohn gets everywhere these days

PS I like number 1

😆
Nº1 for me too.

No1

Thanks for all your input.

This goes to show just how everyone has differing tastes on art. Nice to know you’re not all clones. 😉

Original image straight from the camera.

With the two lower crops, i liked the lighting to the right of the barn as it added contrasting light to dark side of the image.
The sky seems featureless, so couldn’t i thought, be a bigger chunk of the picture.
And i wanted the path to lead the eyes to the people first then the bigger picture, but wasn’t so keen on the dark blank bottom right of the original.

All good constructive comments. Very informative for me.

Thankyou.

BTW, it’s not a Nuclear power station, it’s a college. lol

First one for me.

Cropping-wise the other two are too cramped vertically and they’ve lost any sense of vertical balance. You could lose a little bit of sky from the first if you wanted, but I certainly wouldn’t crop the bottom edge any further.

Colour-wise, the first has contrast between the environment and the buildings, which is all lost in the other two.

What I would do is reintroduce some of the negative space to the left of the first crop, so that the main subjects (the people and the buildings) aren’t pushed so close to the edge of the frame. You may want to clone out that distracting bin lid that will reappear when you do that, though.

And i wanted the path to lead the eyes to the people first then the bigger picture…

The vast majority of people will view pictures from left to right, so the scene basically grants your wish for you. I tend to develop using a 16:9 aspect ratio and doing so with your image would strip the ‘excess’ sky and foreground quite nicely with, if it were my image, a little more sky removed than ground, so that the average horizon is just above the mid-point. I’m not at my home computer otherwise I’d demonstrate.

I like mountain chub’s version best, but without cheating, the first of yours.

Here’s my 5 minute effort though

Cheers RPRT been a fan of your pics since my first puffer in ’08

Cheers Ya’ll.