Whip it....whip it good!

[Caleb]

Well....here goes. Can't believe I've only been here 3 days and already setting myself up for a whuppin'. Just kidding....really I have already learned a lot reading critiques of others pictures so please let me know what you think of anything I post. Just 1 here though, I know. This is a little village in the Canadian maritimes; Nova Scotia if I remember right.

[Andy]

nice rich colors, fairly good leading lines of the waterway leading to the homes... the village looks centrally composed, and is my focal point - this is an ok shot - what would make it outstanding imo is less foreground, and more sky - clouds, color, etc in the sky -- you don't have control over this i know but that's what landscapers wait and wait and wait for :D

thanks for contributing

[Shay Stephens]

The subject for me clearly is the buildings. And I can't help seeing a long 10:4 pano crop here. Minimize the foreground and background which are not that compelling anyway, and I think you'll see a whole new photo.

I am thinking of something like this:
http://forums.shaystephens.com/graphics/panobuildings.jpg

Now the emphasis is on the subject, they are more visually prominent even though they have not changed in size from the original photo.

The hillside in the background was busy and dark and competes for attention. The bright white sky doesn't help either. So I cropped those away in the 10x4 pano. You can buy frames in this size, so it makes a nice standard like 4x6, 5x7, 8x10, etc.

So if you were to go out and reshoot this scene, composing to eliminate the distractions as much as possible would be good, and keep your eye open for standard crop ratios.

It's a beautiful scene, I'm glad I got to see it :-)

[Caleb]

Hey......thanks guys. It really is cool to have a safe place where you can receive some constructive criticism on your stuff. Thank you for taking the time to impart some of your hard won experience!