Hi,
I'd like to hear some opinions about a photo I took. If you can, let me know what you think I can do to make it a better image. Thanks for your time.

Gee, no responses.
I'm not sure what to offer, but....
Pretty scene. I like the framing with just a bit of vegetation along the bottom.
Saturation looks good but the darker greens look a bit murky (on a work monitor; your mileage may vary). Shaprness, detail are good. You have a dust spot on your sensor visible over the water far left about 40% up from the bottom that you should clone out.
Where is this? I want to be there.

Scott

In terms of the darker greens, maybe adjusting the black point or a tad of shadow recovery will bring back some detail.

Scott

Nice photo, and I realize the fog is "drifting" from left to right, or vice versa, but the brighter area at the upper left is pulling my eye away from the house. Cropping about 1" down from the top (visual effect by scrolling my monitor) eliminates this bright spot and allows the eye to pull more toward the subject. The picture also appears weighted to the right because of the open ocean area on the left. Personally, I would crop just to the left of the leftmost tree and corner in the road and lose the ocean since it really doesn't add to the picture.

However, as I look at it more, I think it's the fog that is really distracting. It seems to fade so dramatically in 3 stages from left to right, it makes it seem like something is wrong with the right side. I like the left side by itself, and I really like the right side by itself, but putting the two together just bothers me somehow. Hard to explain, but for ME, if the fog was even over the whole picture, I would just love it. Or if it was clear from left to right, with some beautiful blue/cloudy sky in the background, perhaps some whitecaps on the water.

Just my $.02, hope I provided something of use.

Jo

It's a difficult image. The fog lowers the contract on the right. When you attempt to recover with more contrast, the left has too much contrast that block detail in the darker portions of the image. I believe you can tweak the color balance to improve the blue of the ocean. You can also clone stamp to fix the sensor dust artifact near the edge on the left.

what does the unprocessed original look like?
I think a lot of the points raised may stem from the processing.

Can we see?

Hrmmm, are you trying to be a photographer or a photoshop artist? If you are trying to be a photographer, I would go back and take the picture again when the lighting conditions compliment the scene. If I were trying to be a photoshop artist i would spend hours on this image and come out with multiple images of otherworldly scenes. So it depends on what you are going for on a personal note. Just something to mull over.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I should have given some information about the image. It is a house on Maui, I was about a mile and a half away when the picture was taken. Its nine images with a 300 f/4L + 1.4tc with a 40D. The exposure was difficult to get correct because clouds form and drift over the hill on which the house sits on a very short timescale. After reading some of the comments figured out that my macbooks monitor might have smoothed out some gradients that my trusty mitsubishi crt might reveal, and it did. I can smooth out the "stepping" of the fog considerably and re-crop the image. If I get this done soon I'll post a re-finished image.

I can post a less processed version of the hdr and combined image if anyone is interested but it is of considerable size. Maybe I could give out a link via pm if anyone is that interested, but I think I may have answered the most burning questions about the oddities that some have observed.