High risk dwelling

[jambin]

I took this shot in Tallinn (capital of Estonia) last month. Estonia regained its independence from the Soviet Union some twenty years ago and since then has been battling to fix the place up after half a century of neglect. As you can see they still have a lot to do. The guy on the secong floor must have got all those trophies for bravery ( or fullhardiness?)

[Donald]

Jim a very strong image with its bold colours as well as a very good social documentary.

I wonder what it would be like if you were to rotate it so that the vertical of that light band just in from the left lined up with the left-hand edge of the frame. It will throw the right'hand side windows out, but I suspect that might be better than what we see just now. Maybe worth a try just to assess the impact.

[jambin]

Thanks for your comments, Donald. I tried the rotation you suggested but unfortunately that resulted in the pointy bit on the roof being cropped off. The original image had twice as much building in it and since I was hemmed in behind some sort of barrier and had to shoot at a tight angle the perspective did get a bit weird. If I had had a bit more brass neck I'd have given myself more time to line it up better, but, feeling awkward at pointing the camera at peoples windows, just snatched a shot and high tailed it. Cheers

[KeithH]

A lovely image of urban neglect, (if that's not a contradiction in terms ). I don't know what software you use Jim but in Photoshop you could extend the canvas upwards and clone in some more sky, that would give you room to apply the tweak that Donald mentioned without clipping the peak. Might be worth giving it a go if you can

[jambin]

Thank you Keith. I use an old (free) version of paint shop pro. I have a vague memory of reading somewhere that you could stitch on extra bits of canvas -but where that was I haven't the faintest. I'm a bit of a lazy so and so and usually limit my PP to levels/surves, an occassional mask layer and sharpen. I shall investigate further.

[rpcrowe]

I relize the constraints under which you were shooting. However, cropping this image through the first level of windows leves me incomplete. I cannot really "get into" the image. I "almost" feel better about the image with a crop that is below the second level of windows.

[jambin]

You have a point there Richard. Quite honestly I didn't even think of a tighter crop. That's the benefit of posting on this site: I can borrow other peoples eyes and learn something.

[Shadowman]

Very nice. Tight crop, was your back against the wall?