Nighttime Pier

[Careyl2]

First time posting, long time luking
Took this photo while at Topsail Island, then applied converted to B&W with local coloring in Aperture. Lemme know what you think, all comments are appreciated!

[Frog]

Glad you decided to join the ranks.
I like your picture a lot. I'm not sure how well you did on the conversion but looks pretty good. If those are footprints in the sand, I'd like to see them stand out a bit more but that might be wishful thinking.
Some might say to crop the top or the bottom or both.
I'd give serious consideration to cropping about half the sky and leaving the foreground as is.
It would still really pull the eye to the subject but wouldn't tempt to go beyond if the sky were cropped.
This would also leave the dock less centered.

Hope to be seeing more from you.

[hminx]

Welcome Carey, nice shot, Frog has covered most of it, but I think you also need to pay attention to your horizon, looks a bit left hand down, looking forward to more of your stuff.

[Careyl2]

Thanks for the input guys! I went ahead and cropped the photo some to get the pier less centered. Let me know what you think.

[LeeIs]

Hey Careyl2. Welcome aboard!

I like the black and white artsy feeling to the original. The edit is also good. Feels like the horizon is a bit tilted still.

[Careyl2]

Thanks leels, I just noticed that too, Ill do some straightening in aperture when I have the time.

[Frog]

I like the sky crop but I wish you had left the foreground.

[Careyl2]

Thanks for all the input guys, sorry I'm kinda new at this editing stuff. I fixed the photo once again and just cropped out the sky and left all the foreground, also I straightened the photo. Looks much better now!

[GB1]

Welcome to the forums.

Hmm.

The original has more appeal to me than the crop, even though there's obviously a lot of negative space that most folks will find excessive (that just goes to show that I've looked at too many classical photographs ...). I like the density of the blackness and the lonely feeling of the beach. I feel the subject isn't the strongest though: if it were lit up with Christmas lights or something, that would give it a punchline, but it's just too plain.

Another possibility is a couple walking away from the camera down the beach, with a light blur to denote movement. (That would happen anyway with this low amount of light.)

I agree on the leveling - it needs about 1 degree CW.

Another point is the color of the lights on the pier - they're different instead of all the same color, which I think is good.

G