• moskovitch
    moskovitch
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Hi Mark, one of the things you have to learn as a photographer is how people will read your images. The language of photography is no different really to any written language, there are rules and conventions that guide our interpretation of the material. In writing, the sentences “Let’s eat Grandma” and “Let’s eat, Grandma” are similar, but have very different meanings. Same goes for photography, which is also subject to its own versions of good and bad grammar.

Let’s take a closer look at your image. My guess is that you were drawn to the  glowing red hue in the upper half of this picture. Fair enough too, it’s wonderful. Trouble is, our eyes are naturally drawn to the brightest parts of an image and in this case that’s the the white line running through the middle of the image. You’re “punctuation” is dragging our eyes away from the best part of the picture.

For an easy fix, simply crop out the lower half of the picture and tweak the Curves and Levels to lighten the shadow areas. Left with the red and blue hues of the building the image becomes much more interesting.

Another option... If you shot the image in RAW you may be able to recover some  detail in those clipped highlights near the middle of the image and generally  darken the lower half of the picture. That will help minimise the distractions.

If you’re not happy with either of those options, try a reshoot. Think about how you’re going to lead our eyes to the most interesting part of the image. – Anthony McKee.

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