The Vietnam Memorial at Night

[CLKunst]

Here are images made at The Wall and the Vietnam Nurses Memorial. Critiques are always welcome.

[gahspidy]

I like your composition of the wall and how you have the lights running our eye up through the scene. The purple color sky seems fitting as well. I would only want to see a bit more shadow detail in the dark areas particuliarly the fence in the fg. you could most likely tweak a bit more out of it in ps.
The other image has some beautiful golden tones, but the statue is getting lost in the lights and bg. It blends in with the bg too much It becomes too busy.
Good

[GB1]

Both have some nice color, but for me, the compositions don't do much for me. The top one is a little too geometric and has too much negative space at the bottom and left. The bottom shot has too much clutter behind the statue and seems a little soft.

Subjects like this are easy to get average shots of, but difficult to elevate. Try the statue again, but more of an underneath angle with as wide angle of a lens as you can use. Shine your own colors on it if need by to spice it up a bit (flashlights with colored lens?). The top shot I am not sure, but the subject does have a lot of potential.

GB

[MB1]

Here are images made at The Wall and the Vietnam Nurses Memorial. Critiques are always welcome.

The Wall shot lacks something to attract the eye. The background of the Nurses shot blends into the statue and makes the whole thing muddy to me.

That is a very hard area to photograph, even harder at night. I suspect your best bet is to get in closer and concentrate on details.

[CLKunst]

Thank you for your guidance all. I started this series last year and these were my inital attempts at this particular area of the Mall. I knew there were problems with these but was having trouble defining them for myself being enamored with certain aspects of the image (color) but not truly satisfied with the whole. I figured the forum might be able to give me some fresh perspective before I resumed work around this spot. Thanks to your input I will now have some great ideas about what to steer away from. Will post my second attempts at a later date. Please feel free to comment then as well.

Anyone else with constructive criticism please offer up advice/critique. I won't have time to revisit these sites till at least next week so there's time to chip in your two cents.

Many thanks!
Cindy