Twilight peer

[AntonioCorreia]

The pigeon perched on the concrete walkway or water-control channel immediately caught my eye. I moved closer and realised the nest was tucked into one of the openings, transforming a utilitarian space into a haven of life.

When composing the shot, I placed the walkway on the left to guide the gaze through the scene, which stretches to the horizon where the warm, tranquil light accentuates the atmosphere, reflecting the soft tones of dusk. The tree on the right balances the composition, although now I feel it may be visually a little too dominant.

[billtils]

Agree on "visually a little too dominant" (but nice shot!).

[Geoff F]

Looks good although I think you meant the title to be Twilight pier. However I'm not criticising your normally excellent English.

A Peer is a member of the Government second chamber (House of Lords). Mind you, considering what some of them get up to during the twilight hours . . .

Anyway, you could try slightly cropping the tree and see which option looks best to you.

[AntonioCorreia]

Thank you both for the persistent and generous advice you’ve kindly shared about my photos.
It’s true that the tree takes up perhaps a bit too much space in the frame, but even so, I felt it was worth keeping.
I had a certain sense of proportion in mind that I didn’t want to lose — though I admit I might have to reconsider it.
I’ll try another approach and see how it works out. And it works better indeed !

As for the difference between peer and pier, I see it clearly now !
Geoff, even if you were correcting my English, I wouldn’t mind in the slightest — but you did well to point out that subtlety in the language. It’s a homophone as we know, and that mix-up is perfectly natural even for native speakers but not only.
And about your joke on politicians… well, perhaps it’s quite fitting — and surely applies to a few others out there too.
After all, we’re only human, aren’t we ?
-
One thing still bugs me, though that patch of shadow on the water from the jetty. I’ve tried fixing it a few times but just can’t seem to get it quite right.

[LenR]

Antonio, the cropped version is an improvement in my opinion. Perhaps persist in trying to eradicate the shadow.....

[whited3]

Antonio, I like the shot but there's a lot going on!

Yes, the shadow looks out of place once noticed but it is what it is.

The pier has a lot of detail that is lost due to the sameness of the colours. Maybe some local contrast adjustment could help with this?

[DanK]

Photoshop makes it easy to deal with all of these issues other than the tree.

I used the lasso to get a rough selection of the shadow and used generative fill. The second of the three options it gave me seemed pretty good.

The object selection tool makes it one simple step to select the pier. I did that and added a little contrast.

Then I created a new layer from that, added the mask for selecting the pier, and added some local contrast, as Mark suggested.

That gave me the image below. not a polished edit, but I wanted to show that you can work on these issues without doing anything complicated.

I didn't try the tree, but that is a large enough area that I suspect getting rid of it would be very difficult.

[AntonioCorreia]

Mark and Dan, thank you both so much for your ever-attentive and generous feedback. I truly enjoy reading your comments and consider them a vital part of my learning process.

I’ve tried several times to use various tools—such as the Lasso Tool, Polygonal Lasso Tool, and Quick Selection Tool in conjunction with Generative Fill but I must admit the results have never seemed satisfactory, as you’ll see in the small 100% example I’ve shared below.
As Dan knows, I work with masks in Lightroom, which usually gives me pleasing results, although I can’t always overcome certain limitations. In those cases, I choose to work around them, even if it means switching to Photoshop.
I’ve also noticed that, perhaps due to my monitor’s calibration, you tend to suggest more contrast than feels natural to me—for example, in this area of concrete, which already seems sufficiently detailed.

I worry that my stance might come across as criticism or discourage your much-valued comments. That is by no means my intention. If I disagree on certain points, it’s only to share my perspective with full respect and openness.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Antonio,

If mine, I would consider cropping out, or perhaps 'regenrating' (cloning) out the crack across the peir where the two slabs abut. For me, this forms a barrier to the eye wandering in from the bottom of frame and circulating the composition.

To try the crop option here at CiC, view the image in lightbox (i.e. click on it), then, with a mouse, click and drag it downwards so that crack is off the bottom edge of your monitor.

Had I been there and wanted to make more of the pigeon, if possible (might well not be), I would also try a composition shot with a longer focal length from further away, to achieve the 'compression' effect a telephoto lens is renowned for. Ideally, I'd want to also move the camera lower, but doing so would overlay the pigeon on a darker toned backgorund, which wouldn't work at all.

Just a few thoughts to chuck in the discussion, albeit likely impossible to achieve, due to the surroundings.

Cheers, Dave

[DanK]

I worry that my stance might come across as criticism or discourage your much-valued comments.

You should of course feel free to reject any suggestions. We all have different tastes.

In the case of my post above, I just wanted to show that one can do the suggested things quite easily in Photoshop.

Concerning contrast and texture: this too is a matter of taste. For my taste, it depends on the subject of the photo and what things are prominent in the photo. If old structures are one of the main things in the photo, I often let myself use more texture and contrast--particularly, more texture--than a neutral rendering because the texture is part of the visual effect I want to emphasize. In other types of images, that amount of texture can seem artificial and distracting. but again, that's just my taste.

[AntonioCorreia]

@ Dave
Thank you Dave, for your comment. The crack across the pier where the two slabs meet could have been cloned out, but it never occurred to me to do so. Indeed, other framing options would have been possible, but I wasn’t keen to explore them since there’s plenty to work on in other shots and this one doesn’t feature anything particularly significant that warrants extra effort.

The idea of using a lens with a longer focal length might have been interesting, but I typically shoot with prime lenses, so it didn’t even cross my mind, though it would have been possible.
In principle, as long as my body holds up, I use two primes: a 18 mm wide-angle and a 85 mm short telephoto, the last one just a few metres away, in the car. Honestly, it simply didn’t register.

On location, there are always other things vying for my attention, especially when your aim is to explore new spaces and scenes rather than concentrate solely on photography.

Cheers !

[Geoff F]

When faced with problems like that dark shadow I select the area with the Quick Selection Tool and feather the selection by one or two pixels then use the traditional clone tool to make changes. But you have to allow enough of the source area inside the selection. I tend to find the Lasso and similar tools to be a bit too chunky and cumbersome to work well for me.

Alternatively, you could crop a little from the bottom and crop out that shadow plus the crack which would also lose a little from the tree.

[AntonioCorreia]

Thank you very much for the suggestion Geoff. I truly appreciate it.
However, I’ve already tried that method and, as I mentioned in an earlier message unfortunately I didn’t get satisfying results, so I decided to leave it as is.
Anyway, I will try one more time.
Thanks again !

[AntonioCorreia]

Ah! I finally managed to soften the faint shadow that the initial command had created.
Just needed a bit more patience—and here it is ! Not perfect but...
Thanks to everyone for the tips !

[pschlute]

Lovely composition Antonio.