Assignment 1: Tutor Response

Although not the most demanding assignment, I was really please to get the one word sentance "Brilliant!!" in the email accompanying the written feedback.  So far so good!

On the subject of workflow, the only comment was that I should reformat my cards after backup - a good point and something I often forget to do, and often only realize after taking a bunch more photographs using the old card.  My saving grace is the combination of the Lightroom being intelligent enough to only upload new images from a card and the fact that memory cards are so cheap now, space is not really an issue.  My camera strap has 2 x 8GB permanently enclosed in a pocket to act as spares.  I now have over 10 8GB cards, enough to use a new card every day when on an extended diving trip - this acts as an effective backup in case of hard drive failure on my laptop.

Regarding the individual images:

DPP1-1 Suggestion to crop some of the weeds off the bottom of the frame:

Original

Updated

I have slightly changed the aspect ratio from 3x2 to A4 in doing the crop, something I will need to do to all images prior to printing.  Reducing the weeds meant that I needed to reduce the inclusion of the left hand tower block - not sure about that.  A more Panoramic crop might work better:

 Not sure about this, it was the juxtaposition of the unruly foreground with the clean buildings in the background that originally brought my attention to this subject.

DPP1-3:  Crop the image so that the tower moves further to the right of the image:

Original

Update

This does look better, however, there is only a little I can do without losing the reflections in the steel at the bottom of the frame.  Again I have not much altered the aspect ratio of the image.  This might work better as a square crop.

Much better!

DPP1-5: The suggestion here was to clone out the lamp on the far right - not sure about that?

Cropped

I think a slightly tighter crop manages the job - I am very unsure about using clone tools to tidy up images, beyond removing dust spots or optical artifacts.

DPP1-7: Reduce the glare from the panel in the bottom right

Original

Adjusted

This is a rather crude reduction in exposure made in Lightroom, but it does aide the composition and removed a distracting element from the frame.  I could have used a crop, however, I like the crane in the bottom right of the frame.

DPP1-8: Here the suggestion was to clone out the crane.  This is the only case where I really disagree, for me the crane is a key element of the composition, one reason why I created this image.  Furthermore removing it would be a singificant challenge as it occupies a large part of the image and is behind starbursts.

Overall very good suggestions and I realize I have much to do when it comes to balancing compositions.  This feedback also raises two major questions in my mind, that of major modification and of aspect ratios in images.