This link points to two photos I took on a particularly foggy day by the Golden Gate. The only phone I had with me was my wife’s cell phone. The third is an attempt to make something out of at least one of them.
The first photo probably should have had more traffic in it to add some context. I have had a hard time making a useful photo out of it. The second is the basis of the next two. I think I improved the composition a lot. I also tried to tweak the levels and sharpness, but I am not sure there is much I can do with the colors and grain. I tried to see how it looked in B&W but I don’t like it, not enough contrast or interest throughout.
Any thoughts, suggestions. Feel free to upload them and see what you can come up with.
I like the final cropped shot quite a bit. Strikes me like the opening shot of a movie scene. I am waiting for the camera to pan down the cables. Evocative and quite memorable, I’m sure I’d be able to call it to mind months from now.
Didn’t apply any sharpening adjustment myself, though cropping and a levels adjustment do bring out the halos present in the original - there’s only so much to work with in an underexposed cell phone .jpg.
I actually applied an Unsharp Mask in hopes of bringing out the orange color of the bridge more, I should post the picture without that layer. Like zombywoof said, there is only so much you can do when the detail isn’t in the original.
When composing shots, watch out for little distractions: the top of the streetlight at the bottom in the first photo is a good example. Those are really strong graphic shapes that demand the eye’s attention, and distracting from them clutters things up.
The second one feels off-balance, to the right: there’s a dividing line down the centre, top to bottom, and all the visual ‘weight’ is on the right-hand side of the divide. Because there’s so little of the traffic at bottom left, that feels a little like a distraction as well.
Third one’s definitely a strong shot, compositionally speaking. The line leading into the image is awesomely strong, giving it a sense of tension and movement; there’s a nice contrast between the reddish colour of the main line and the grey of the fog. I do think you’ve gone a little far on the sharpening but the composition is just about spot-on, imho.
Thanks for the input. I agree with everything you said, those were my thoughts exactly about the first two. The third one is just the second one cropped to remove all that negative space and a little other tweaking to try and bring out some more interest in the photo, it looked too flat, IMO. I did consciously try to make the bridge line disappear into the fog at the southeast “rule-of-thirds” intersection.
