Cell phone pic - Winter fountain

[acsky]

I took this one on my way back from work.

Ideas to improve it???

Toño

[Geoff F]

The problem with that shot, Tono, is that you were shooting into the light so have exposed for the sky which has then left the main focal point a little dark.

The simple alternative, if it was possible, would have been to shoot from the other side.

Any overall adjustments now, will tend to over expose the sky. However, an adjustment layer with a mask which is edited to just apply to the darker areas may be worth trying.

[MrB]

Toño, although I do not yet know the techniques to do this properly, but might I suggest that you could reduce the brightness and contrast on the background and blur it, while increasing the brightness and sharpness of the foreground carefully. Here is a rough edit to give an idea of the effect I mean -



Philip

[acsky]

Hi Geoff

The reason I had to shoot in that direction is that I had shot another pic before and the background was even less interesting than the one you see in this image. I liked the appearance of the frozen water, but the background indeed was not nice. Because of the light conditions the fountain appeared a little washed. Therefore I increased the contrast a bit, but as you adequately pointed out, the sky looks overexposed. But it was not very dramatic anyway...

Philip. I have to admit that your edit looks nicer since it builds up some distance between the background and the subject. I'll try to replicate it here. Thanks.