Hi Erik,
Welcome to the forum! If you get a chance......please post any specs you have (f-stop, SS, ISO, etc.) so that we may better evaluate the image and offer possible improvements.
Overall, the image looks a bit soft as presented. Many factors can contribute to this .....hand holding at slow SS or not enough DOF....even failure to aquire AF in low light. The whole image does appear to need a CCW rotation and a split ND filter would have helped bring up the FG (or HDR). I like the way you composed using the road on a diagonal, but after you rotate it I would crop a good portion off the botom as the FG is the least interesting. Yo may also try bringing up the FG a bit with a levels or curves layer.....but no too much to lose the feel of dusk. The fence blances nicely with the clouds so bringing that up a bit will only strenghten the image.
Everything Roman suggested will definitely make this a better image. The star of the photo is the wonderful sunset colors, so you want to make them the most prominent part of the photo. You might also try a bit of noise reduction in the sky to smooth things out a bit. Oh - and welcome to the forum; you can learn a lot of from the wonderful and talented people here.
Welcome and I also agree with the gentleman, The dirt at the bottom of the picture is just too much for me, But what a beautiful sky, can't wait to see the next one, good job :)
Hi Erik,
The re-post shows the crop....I lightened the FG using a levels layer.....I saturated the reds in the sky a bit and did add blacks in selective color and a LCE (Robert's tutorial at top of forum in Contrast/tonal range tweaks) of 25/30/0 Did help bring up some pop.....but still recommend the filter or HDR in the field. I did run noise ninja on the whole image also. Let me know what you think.
PS Rotated canvas 1 degree CCW.
Last edited by Roman Kurywczak; 08-06-2009 at 12:16 PM.
Reason: added ps
Roman, very interesting and very effective modifications of the original image. Much of the sharpness and saturation of the original image were lost when I resized it for posting. I will try to tune this up the next time I post. You were dead right about the foreground--it especially looked boring the way it was originally cropped. Erik