The Road

[guymclaren]

http://dpnow.com/galleries/data/564/medium/road3.jpg

I have added a few to the gallery, some stuff I went out and found this morning, I was looking for a fantastic Bridge shot but it still eludes me. Just wanted to know what ya 'all thought of this one?

[Bearface]

This is a simple enough scene with some lovely, strong colours. I think there's definitely potential here. These are my observations:

The composition is a little "50/50" in that the upper and lower main features of the shot take up half the image each. Sometimes this works fine, but here I feel that here it's less successful, in that the eye is naturally drawn to the gravel of the pathway, but here the pathway fails to lead anywhere, so it appears to be simply a large area of gravel.

You could try to use a thirds composition, which can be employed either from side to side or top to bottom (or both), in this case by raising the camera about a foot or so in order to include the distant winding pathway off to the right (while retaining your lead-in clump of grass to the left). This would reduce the sky and trees to the upper third of the image, but you would see a greatly improved sense of balance and flow to the shot overall, particularly as the distant pathway would add a sense of depth and interest to the image.

There's a bit about the rule of thirds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thirds) here...........take a look :)

As I've said before, try to get yourself used to composing from different heights and always consider alternative perspectives of the same scenes - you'd be surprised how different one place can look from different angles. As for the rule of thirds (and other such "rules")............well, it's useful to know them so that you can always lean on them when the need arises.

Hope this helps :D

[res31]

I'd agree with Bearface here - some beautiful colours but could be improved by shooting from a little higher, giving the eye somewhere to follow the road into the distance (looks like it might be a nice S-shaped curve) - and keep the road down in the lower 1/3 of the picture
...ray

[guymclaren]

Thanks Gents, I was trying for something different, trying for texture rather than destination