Landscape

[100205]

Took this at Mount Vernon, VA overlooking the Potomac River

[Instructor]

Hello and thanks for submitting yet another assignment so quickly! You're moving through the course very fast. Maybe too fast?

The assignment:

This will be an assignment that will test your practical knowledge of landscape or cityscape photography. For this assignment you will need to take a visually impressive cityscape or landscape shot (depending on whichever is more convenient for you to achieve).

Your picture should take into consideration everything we’ve spoken about thus far. Take care with your composition and lighting. When you are ready you can upload your work to our online student assignment center.

This is a nice photo but it has some serious flaws.

First, your exposure is such that the a very large portion of the sky is completely blown out white. There is no detail in that area at all. Having a little blown out spot here and there is not a problem but having a large portion of the image being blown out just doesn't work. Especially when this image is framed in such a way that the sky becomes the focus.

Secondly, the tree is suffering from the all too common 'amputation'. As humans we don't like not being able to see things. The left side of the tree is cut off and as such I was looking at that and not the beauty of the image itself.

Third, the little bush in the lower right appears to be out of place and slightly out of focus.

I've made some notes about this here:

This has been your weakest image to date and we know you can do better.

We don't want to seem to hard on you but this is lesson 10! You should be remembering not to amputate, keep good exposure, and compose your frame is a simpler fashion.

If you want to reshoot this we'll be happy to look at it again.

[100205]

Yea I understand. Thanks for the feedback and I will use that to my advantage when redoing this picture. It may be in a different area.

[Instructor]

[100205]

I took this at sunset at Lions Bridge in Virginia. The only thing I could not get in the frame was the tree on the left. I have half of it but there was a nasty light pole that would have thrown off the image or the look I was going for. :/

[Instructor]

This is a great shot!

Much better!!!