Vietnam 01

[engineer]

I have just been in Vietnam and Cambodia and this shall be the first post: I think its a very typical view of the country.
What do you think?

[gahspidy]

I like the inclusion of the bikes in the bg. A few things would help bring this composition up some more. I think if you had less fg and more of the upper area of the bg it would give a better sense of scale and balance to the comp. Also, having the subject more to the left frame and even cutting the bike on the left in half in doing so would help. It brings the subject out of dead center and has him/her walking into the scene. Having the subject in the center is not always a bad thing, but in this case we have the bikes lined up near the center line of the frame,(one on each side). The curb and the edge of the house is along this same line pretty much as well as the baskets. The eye is pulled to the center and can only scan left and right on the center line and does not feel free to scan around the entire image freely. Does this make any sense? Seems you were standing on steps or a porch as you are higher up in the shot. I'm thinking that did not help here .
I do like the image even with it's faults, but these are the things that I think could have been addressed to improve the composition.

[Frog]

Yup! Gary said everything I would.

[MB1]

It looks like you shot if from a fairly high vantage point (like a bus) which removes the viewer from the image. I like the composition but wish it were shot from a lot lower plus that light foreground makes the wall look darker than it likely was.

[engineer]

I was standing on the other side of the street (which is relatively narrow, no cars there), and a little bit elevated on a curb. I see what you mean, maybe I should have gone down a bit (I am over 190 cm high
Apart from the mentioned faults, I am still thinking of making it black and white. (?)

[gahspidy]

I was standing on the other side of the street (which is relatively narrow, no cars there), and a little bit elevated on a curb. I see what you mean, maybe I should have gone down a bit (I am over 190 cm high
Apart from the mentioned faults, I am still thinking of making it black and white. (?)

you could always try it, but this does not look to have much tonality for a b&w to really fly off of. I appreciate the colors of the greens in the baskets and the shirt off the dark color wood in the bg.
Maybe a very high contrast b&w to let the shapes pop might be the way if you did a conversion

[GB1]

Ok, but could have been great. I've tried a few simple crops of this but I don't think composition is the problem: the foreground is. It's just too plain! I also wish the background was enclosed like that. Oh well, can't get it all sometimes. -GB