How can I make the image look more interesting when the weather grey and drab? (1st post - here's hoping)

[Pat Pending]

Hi Guys,

My first post, so please excuse me If I've screwed up. (Yes I read the rules and instructions hones :-) )

I just wondered how I could have done this one better?
The weather was pretty awful, featureless sky and grey muddy water. I think Pier's make great subjects, but this just came out bland and uninteresting - any thoughts?

Martin

[madattak]

Hi, I'm new here too, so let's see how this turns out. My first thought was that the end of the pier is a focus point, but isn't positioned as well as it could be.  To pass on a link sent to me on my first post, take a look  at the rule of thirds. http://digital-photography-school.com/rule-of-thirds/ I'd probably place that little hut right on center with one of the intersections. I also put the image on paint.net and found tweaking the contrast up slightly and boosting the saturation a bit makes the green and pink railing really stand out in contrast to the grey background which I thought looked nice (I can't actually post it because of copyright :p ). Other than that I'm a little short of ideas, so I'll let the experts take over from this point! 

Edit:

I'd add if anybody has software capable of separating out the pier from the sea and sky, I'd jam the saturation right up on the pier and tone it down for the sea so that the dull background works in your favour by making the pier really stand out. 

Edit 2: paint.net is not meant to be a link. How can I turn that off? --fixed

Edit 3: (They just keep coming)  There's not much going on in the bottom of the photo, I'd recommend cropping it so that the entirety of the first support is just visible, when I tried it I thought it made it look much nicer.

[Kevin Childress]

Martin,

I agree with you that piers make wonderful subjects; I don't think I've ever passed one that I didn't take at least a couple snaps. And this does look like a real nice pier with awesome potential! Granted the colors on the pier are a bit skewed with the light temperature, it looks like the pier has some great colors to be exploited.

I believe the thoughts you shared in your original post regarding the awful weather, the featureless sky, and muddy water pretty much sum this one up. Granted those factors are no reflection on you as the photographer, it does leave you with something of a drab photograph. You asked what you could do to make the image look more interesting when the weather grey and drab. As for in-camera work, where the drab factor is concerned, obviously the only thing you could have done differently would have been to choose a different day, or time of day, to photograph the scene. With that said, I always ask: are you able to revisit the pier for another shot?

For your camera work, I see you shot this on manual exposure. So the good news is that you, as the photographer, did a good job managing the exposure. :)  One thing you might consider is reading about the different metering modes in your camera. The Google Chrome EXIF Viewer shows this was shot using "Pattern" metering mode, which I think equates to Sony's Muli-Segment metering. Maybe look at the center-weighted metering mode. In my experience (shooting Nikon cameras), I find the center-weighted metering mode produces a better-balanced overall exposure (but that's only to suit my personal preference). 

In the world according to me, composition is king. Technical accuracy is always important but excellent composition is the foundation for a "great photograph". Where the composition is concerned, at least from this angle, I would suggest considering a focal length that frames the pier a bit tighter. Its nice to see a big, wide angle to provide maximum context, but I think the pier itself could benefit from a tighter composition bringing more of the pier house into view. I'd really like to see a straight-on shot of the pier house, with the pier railing framing the left/right sides of the image, but it looks like that may be difficult with the lamp posts and benches running down the center of the pier.

Finally, I wouldn't give up on this image just yet. I see a lot of potential for a nice black-and-white conversion, with a healthy dose of perspective and lens correction, with a tighter crop to include the people and a better view of the pier house.  With your permission, I would be happy to upload an edited version in this thread as an example.

Oh, and speaking of the lens distortion, you've got a bit of barrel distortion taking place here. You'll find that barrel distortion will shift in that lens across different focal lengths. Take a look at that lens review at slrgear.com. You'll see an interactive chart that allows you to view a distortion map when using different f/stop and focal length combinations. 

Best regards,

Kevin

[Kevin Childress]

madattak wrote:

Edit 2: paint.net is not meant to be a link. How can I turn that off?

 

Edit your reply again - select the text that is linked - click on the "LINK" edit tool in the dialog controls - remove link.

 

[hvbemmel]

For the "digital photography" school, we have our own thursday photo tips (including rule of thirds). Just to promote our own forum :-)

On Thursday, 25 June 2015 16:38:52 UTC+2, madattak wrote:

Hi, I'm new here too, so let's see how this turns out. My first thought was that the end of the pier is a focus point, but isn't positioned as well as it could be.  To pass on a link sent to me on my first post, take a look  at the rule of thirds. http://digital-photography-school.com/rule-of-thirds/ I'd probably place that little hut right on center with one of the intersections. I also put the image on paint.net and found tweaking the contrast up slightly and boosting the saturation a bit makes the green and pink railing really stand out in contrast to the grey background which I thought looked nice (I can't actually post it because of copyright :p ). Other than that I'm a little short of ideas, so I'll let the experts take over from this point! 

Edit:

I'd add if anybody has software capable of separating out the pier from the sea and sky, I'd jam the saturation right up on the pier and tone it down for the sea so that the dull background works in your favour by making the pier really stand out. 

Edit 2: paint.net is not meant to be a link. How can I turn that off?

[Kevin Childress]

Hahahaha, Herman! Touché! I suppose I have to accept responsibility for that. :)

[© Tom Cooper]

I am going to both agree and disagree with Kevin and madattack.

 

Agreement:

I like madattack's idea of getting the pier colors to pop, especially the pink (railing fill), green (railing), and yellow (lap posts & hut).  Then don't just tone down the rest of the colors, go to a B&W conversion.

 

I noticed right off the barrel distortion the Kevin mentioned, as well as a slight tilt down to the left.  Fixing those would help.

 

Disagreement:

While I agree that a litte cropping might help, it's the perspective of near to far that is the most interesting aspect of the photo.  Don't crop that.  In fact, if you shoot this again, get even closer to the pier so that the near end of the pier drops below the bottom corner of the image.  In fact, try going even closer, so that the bottom of the near end of the pier crosses the bottom of the photo at the lefthand rule of thirds line.  Try all three positions, and see which one is most interesting to you.  I'll bet it's the third.

 

I also disagree that the drab day kills your opportunities.  Find something else here to shoot.  For example, the fan pattern of the railing would make a great detail shot, and as long as there is some detail in the water behind it, it can hold it's own without a problem.  There are other perspectives that could work.  Shooting directly down the length of pier, aming low enough that almost all the sky is gone would be an example, but also a cliche, so be careful.

 

Regarding metering modes, I honestly don't know what metering mode my camera is in right now.  Most of the time, I don't use it.  Instead, I use histogram mode, and set an exposure that puts the rightmost brightness data very close to (but not touching) the right edge of the graph.  I bracket from there.  That initial exposure can be as much as two stops different from the metered exposure, but is almost always the one I choose to use.

 

Tom

[Pat Pending]

Wow!

Some brilliant feedback and advice there guys, thank you very much for taking the time and trouble to construct such meaningful and helpful replies. It's amazing how I missed things like the horizon and the barrel distortion!
I'm going to see if I still have the raw file and will have a fiddle with it.

Thanks so much for the critique :-)

Martin

[Desmond Riordan]

Hi Martin,

I hope it's not too late to add my two penn' orth to what has already been said. 

Firstly, is it always like that in Penarth? I was there killing an hour or two some years back and the weather was awful. However, I like awful weather as it provides some great opportunities for atmospheric photos (you can see my shots of the beach and pier here: http://www.panoramio.com/user/3186024/tags/Penarth).

Your picture is not without a good deal of potential and there is much that has already been posted that I agree and disagree with. The picture as it stands is, as you say, a little bland but some post production could really bring out its oomph. I don't know what photo editing software you have but Adobe are no longer supporting older versions of Photoshop and consequently have made CS2 available for free download - just Google 'Photoshop CS2 free download' and you will find plenty of links.

I hope you don't mind but I took the liberty of playing with your shot and here's what I felt gave it a bit of welly. 

That horizon really needs straightening  out, this can be done quite easily in Photoshop using the lens correction filter. Next I 'imitated' a graduated ND by making a feathered selection across the top of the picture and darkened it in Levels -  this added a little more interest to the sky and stopped the top of the image floating away. I used the dodge tool to bring up some of the highlights in the water and the burn tool to darken the pier's reflection a little.

With regard to colour, Maddattak suggested boosting the colour of the pier while knocking back the colour of the water. I have a good deal of sympathy for that approach and have used it myself in the past when I wanted to emphasise an element of the composition. However, I'm with Kevin on this one. I regard colour in a picture as being information and sometimes I ask myself 'is what the colour is telling me sufficiently important?'. In this case although the colours on the pier are attractive they aren't what's going to hold my attention - the composition is and so I went with black and white. Now, this is where I'm going to disagree with everyone and say that the rule of thirds isn't going to make this a dramatic photo and it's drama that this picture is lacking.

Before cropping I used the skew tool in the Transform section to correct the perspective distortion so that verticals appeared, well, more vertical. This has the effect of compressing the image somewhat, so I increased the height of the image to compensate. I cropped the bottom to near where the closest supports meet the water and the right hand side of the shot to bring the edge of the frame very close to the end of the pier so that it runs diagonally almost from corner to corner. A minor crop to the left to remove some distracting details and that was it. Normally, I would point out that the horizon is on the same level as the end of the pier and, as a rule, that's not a great idea but with the tight crop it seems to add to the composition, acting as a lead-in line. When I laid a grid over the photo to check horizontals and verticals I found that the only part of the picture that fell in with the rule of thirds was one of the supporting pillars.'Thirds' is a very useful rule but rarely makes for a dramatic photo

Once again, apologies for taking liberties with your image but I felt that there was a really good picture trying to get out. If you would like to see what I have done I would be happy to post it, giving you credit of course, and I would then take it down when you have had a look.

Keep up the good work, Martin and welcome to the forum.