Railway Crossing

Once again, changing this into a black and white image resulted in a better photo. The bright golden yellow field in the background distracted from the flow of the pathway to the clearing and finally to the railway crossing.

When you import your images into your photo publishing/processing program, pull out the colour and see if the result brings an improvement. Of course, this largely depends on what your subject is...or is not.

Here, in this image, the subject is not the field but it presented that way with the colour. The railway crossing was all but lost with the distraction of the yellow mass. In addition, the flow was interrupted before the intended stop at the railway crossing.

I shot this image with a shutter speed of 1/80 and aperture of f/10. My ISO was firmly fixed at 100.

Docked - Composition and Processing

For a photographer, engaging viewers is an important piece of composition. To draw the viewer's eye in and through this picture, I used the lines of the railings as an entry point, then moved up the dock, followed the lines of the sailboats' masts up and back down to greet the boats and back into the picture again. This flow allows me to keep the viewer engaged, assuming they are interested in the subject matter to begin with.

I wanted to give this image a nostalgic feel to it. To accomplish this, I decreased the saturation and clarity in Lightroom which resulted in a softer image, almost like a painting.

Fluid

The movement from one board of the picnic table to the other is fluid. The wood grain follows the shadow, crossing the gap effortlessly over to the next plank and continues on. It is not still.