Citylights

[Cowseye]

1. in what area is critique to be sought?
Composition and application of panorama.
2. what one hopes to achieve with the piece of work?
Cityscape. And it's lights and reflection from the blurry moving water
3. under what circumstance is the picture taken? (physical conditions/emotions)
Standing from MBS shooting right across the waters, 5 pieces panorama, f/16, 16mm, 20s, ISO 200
4. Personal thoughts about the image?
I might have achieve what I wanted to capture, but honoestly, I think there's something wrong with my composition. The lightings also made most of the sky look brownish. I did tone it darker in photoshop but it just seems not dark enough, any darker made the whole picture looks bad.

Been trying out night photography on my own with lots of trial and error. Any critque and pointers are welcome. Thank you for your attention.

 

[foxtwo]

Composition unbalance? The right side is so much less inspiring than the left. There's no significant structure anchor other than the Esplanade but that's lost in scale.
People mostly take the CBD and leave out City Hall for a good reason. Suggest you post the original image and we'll see what can be done instead. Too much detail lost for any further processing.

 

[Cowseye]

Thank you for your reply. It's a 5 pieces stitched panoroma. I'll upload the pieces later.

 

[Cowseye]

 

[Cowseye]

Any help please?

 

[xxdoggyxx]

Hmmm. Help as in???

I realize your photo is not focus properly...
This is the 'less slanted' and i don't think its so good photo.
If you want the capture the whole CBD, make it in the center of the photo you wanna stitch. Be careful of those small distraction like the railing on the bottom right.

P.s. Its either your aperture or exposure. Next time, try 22F for 20s. I think it will be nicer.

Cheers

 

[gundamseed84]

To me it's over exposure...the white building is too bright and details are lost. Also I think the colours are a little too 'red'. The first 2 shots' sharpness is still alright since I guess that's where you focus on. Then subsequent shots you did not check whether your image is still in focus before continuing the pano shots. This is because the buildings are at different distance from your lens so you need to adjust (manual focus if can) accordingly.

I am not good with post processing but what I did with your 5 images was to stitch together, I adjusted the levels, exposure & gamma, shadow and highlights also adjust the HUE towards the blue (reduce the red) and crop out part of the pano and crop the bottom half so the water level is at 1/3 level.

The white building I used layers, one of the layers I reduced the exposure so that the building is less bright then merge the two layers together again (if you notice I did not do the layering that well (the outline of the building is still too bright). Then do some simple sharpening.

Just a rough adjustment haha the reflection of the white building on water is still brighter than the building which makes it odd still but ermmm... I am lazy to continue. Hopefully overall it seems better.

P.S I am not good at landscape but you might want to google "black card technique" to keep your sky remain dark without underexposing your buildings.

 

[Cowseye]

Thanks for all the comments. gundamnseed84, could you provide the link to your image. It's not display here and I tried opening the link in a new tab but it still won't work. I think it's imageshack problem

 

[gundamseed84]

 

[Cowseye]

Still cannot... Still the same frog that says domain not registered.

 

[sinned79]

watch your horizon, a lot of tilts in your photos. buildings that slides off to one side aren't nice.

 

[Cowseye]

Thanks Gundamseed I get the idea now.
@sinned79 Thanks for the advice. I think I had been doing pano pan shots very wrong. I attached my camera to a ballhead, making sure it's level using spirit level, then pan across 90 to 160 degrees for the shots. But I always get tilted images some where is the middle till end. I better research more on how to do this.

 

[S L Chai]

Maybe you could have used a longer focal length, in landscape format, and zoom in closer until the buildings fill most of the frames, but not too tight. My guess is that you want the reflections in the water, so include those as well. Then the frames will just consist of the buildings and the reflections. Can leave out most of the dark sky and water since there are no significant things in them.

Next time, you can try to include MBS in your panorama as well.

My 2 cents worth.