Mission San Luis Rey de Francia

[Brendan Dozier]

I've driven past this mission many times, and liked how they lit it up at night, so thought I'd take some shots. I realize it has quite a few rough spots, but wanted to get suggestions on how to improve the capture of this setting & lighting on the next go around.

7D, EF-S18-55mm f/3.5-5.6, tripod

This was a blend of two exposures:

Building: 0.4 sec / 4.5 / ISO 400

FG & sky: 10 sec / 4.5 / ISO 400

[dankearl]

Very nice Brendan. The sky with the stars is great and the lighting is nice on the building.
I would just run some noise reduction on the clouds, an easy fix.
I would also tone down the blue lighting on the left side buildings behind the trees.
They are distracting to me and don't really add anything to a fine image.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Brendan, I happen to like this! Nicely handled technically with the blending working well. On my screen I'm having a hard time discerning the noise but agree with Dan regarding the lt blue on the left. A bit unnatural compared to the rest of the scene. The clouds frame the church nicely and the few stars add to the image and give a reason for keeping that much sky. Good job..

[Robert Amoruso]

I would agree with the above comments Brendan. It has been a long time since I have been to Oceanside in CA but it was nice to see the mission again.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Brendan,
I agree on the blue ont he LH side......but you did very well over all for the reasons mentioned! An option for you to try....is upping the ISO a bit and slowing the SS for the building......f16 would give you sunbursts from the lights.......so may add another element. When shooting city images......I tend to abandon the stars and go for artificial jewels by using f22! Just something to try when you are composing and have time! I still think this is very appealing and very well done overall......so the minor tweaks will put it over the top!

[Brendan Dozier]

Thanks Dan, Dave, Robert & Roman, much appreciated. Here's repost:

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Brendan, very nice comp. The left side looks much better in the repost. Well done!

[Dave Mills]

Hi Brendan, less distracting elements in the repost. An improvement!!

[dankearl]

Repost looks great Brendan, well done.

[John Platt]

Love the repost... nice job on this image.

[Brendan Dozier]

Thanks folks!

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Brendan, a bit late to the party. Great advice already given and processed! I love the tonal range in this image, very well handled. Only thing to add is that the image seems in need of some slight CW rotation, the roof lines seem to hinge a little to the left. Very well done!

[Rachel Hollander]

Brendan - repost really improves this. Nicely done.

TFS,
Rachel

[Brendan Dozier]

Thanks Jerry & Rachel

Nice call Jerry regarding a bit of rotation - need to look more closely at the vertical as well as horizontal lines. Here's repost: