North Abbey Ruins

[Ollokot]

Hi folks,
A Dear friend of mine was doing a project on the history of this Abbey and asked if I would take a series of photos to which I duly obliged. This one I did as HDR and wanted to be subtle with it, your thoughts and comments would be most welcome, Best Wishes, Pat

[FrankMi]

Hi Pat, as the goal is to concentrate on the Abbey, I would decrease the DoF so that the prominent modern architecture is either diminished or completely indistinguishable. With the sky bright and the Abbey dark, I keep looking at the sky instead of the Abbey. Could you have used the golden hour light to illuminate the details of the Abbey?

The HDR aspect of the image doen't seem to be a problem as it is, as you desired, subtle.

Hope this helps!

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Pat,

Mission successful on the HDR, very nicely done.

However, the first thing I thought was "it's a shame those houses are there".

I was wondering whether it was possible to shoot from a lower angle - but I fear that may hide a fair bit of Abbey wall behind it too. Plus you'd lose the context of the estuary(?) and hills behind.

Got any more?

Shameless plug:
You might be interested in my recent foray into this kind of thing; St Mary de Lode, Gloucester, but the closest I got to HDR was the final shot (and that was an unbracketed jpg!)

Cheers,

[glenng]

Yep lovely photo shame about the houses.

[Geoff F]

For me, the HDR tone merge of the sky against the walls has worked well but the extra effects have over done the houses. I can accept the slightly high contrast on the abbey wall but the houses are too harsh now.

Would a tighter crop, maybe 5 x 4 ratio, remove most of those distractions?

[Ollokot]

Thank you Frank, Dave, Glenn and Geoff for your comments, it is a shame about the houses.
The grounds of the Abbey and where it once stood have been a graveyard for centuries, here is an image taken with that in mind, the first is with the background houses in the image and the second with an edit to remove the background, the exposure time was 19 minutes and I wanted to keep the ambiance of what available light was there, your thoughts are most welcome, Best wishes, Pat

[Geoff F]

If the houses were more subtle in lighting you might have got away with leaving them; but as it is, they had to go.

The only other thing I wonder about is whether there is a little too much dark foreground. Would a slight crop from the bottom and right side be worth considering.

[Ollokot]

Hi Geoff,
Thank you for your comments, with regard to the crop I did suggest something along those lines to my friend but she told me she liked it the way it was, so that was that.
Best Wishes, Pat