Reflections

[kuul13]

These pictures were taken from Statue of Liberty.. I was very lucky to see the sun coming out of the clouds for couple of minutes.. when i took these two shots.. Hope you can give your opinion on the composition.. whether I did justice to the picture and which one is better..

[OldClicker]

Photos didn't make it. Did you hit the Upload button in the pop up box before closing it? - TF

[LeeIs]

Hey Kuul, I think both photos are too stark and dark. I don't know how much you've post processed them but I think it might have been a tad too much. It seems you had some great skies going that day though!

[OldClicker]

I'm deffinately a fan of the second. Beautiful blue sky. Level it and chop off most of the water. - TF

[Shebang]

I like #2 best -- except it is unlevel. Compositionally, I think you could improve #2 by following the 2/3rd rule - cropping the right side which has the most blown highlights and cropping the bottom some to get the rail and bird closer to the "thirds" line. Your skies are dramatic which I love. #1 is too dark on the sides, but the sky is awesome.

[BlueRob]

Since this in the Critique section I wont hold my tong a please note that the comments are meant in a good manner with the intent of a fair critique.

The color saturation and harsh blown highlights personally think ruins the overall composition of the shot, leveling as other mentioned is also a must. For me is unclear what did you intended to capture with this shots. the bird? the sunset?.
On the other hand is very difficult to grab a shot with direct sun and hard water reflection in front, the metering goes crazy and major tweaking is required.

As possible PP improvements that I might suggest would be to level the horizon and try both shots in B&W / gray scale with adjustments in the highlights-shadow range. HTH

[GB1]

Welcome to the forums. I like the top shot the best out of the two posted. It looks a tad surreal, but it is neat for that. MUST fix the horizon's tilt in both though. Could use a little more definition in the water on the top one. Both these issues are easily fixed in post processing software.

Hope to see more..

G