The Mansion, a photo from Brestskaya, West

Photographer's Note

A long long time ago it was a Residence of A Chancellor Sapega. He was very reach and very powerful man in ancient Belarus. Here you can see the remains of our great history and culture. The castle was built in XVII-XVIII centuries in style of baroque with some elements of classism which developed in Belarus in the 2nd half of XVIII century. Located on a hill in a small belarussian village of Ruzhany it's one of the greatest historical places of our country.

I've made small changes to original picture - corrected distiorsion, cropped a bit, added some more contrast and sharpened. Hope you like it.

Davidh34, JEPC trouve(nt) cette note utile

Critiques | Translate

j10opname (0) 2006-10-18 12:28

Too dark madam.....the sky tone is not good...minus sharpening..I'am sory, my english is not good....thx

Davidh34 (838) 2006-10-18 12:34

Hi Alexey

It certainly looks like it must have been a very grand house. It is a shame it was not a brighter day to do more justice to the building. I think the composition is good, but overall a bit dark. Good note. TFS

Voltri (1777) 2006-10-19 2:57

Алексей, картинка темновата, но этот "трафарет" на фоне травы выглядит шикарно!

JEPC (1305) 2006-11-30 17:27

Hi Alexey,
I really like your photos. I lke your POV's and stetic sense. I like the way you put your eyes over the olds things. Great compo and DOF.
TFS,
João Eduardo

lcelvenes (0) 2007-02-08 18:34

Hi Alexey

Interesting note to the photo. There´s so much I don´t know. A few thoughts from me regarding your photo:

1) I´ll start with the composition. Very good. I like it a lot. I think you´ve kept it simple, making it easy for the viewers to focus on the ruins of the building. I also think it´s a good three-part division formed by the foreground grass, the building, and then the sky. The path up to the ruins also creates some interest to the foreground.

2) While I like your point of view very much, my eyes are also drawn to the arches on the right side of the photo. If you have the chanse to photograph this scene again, I suggest you also try to get a photo with those arches as a leading line into the photo (if it is possible. Maybe you´ve even done it already :). Just thought I´d mention it since I believe it would be an interesting POV as well.

3) Colors and light. The green (and slight beige) in the foreground complements the off-white/beige and red ruins very well, in my opinion. I think it looks very good. As I said above, I like how you´ve kept it simple, and these colors help strenghten that point.
The sky is not bad, but it´s a bit gray and has some noise. The slight cloud formations helps a bit, but the underexposure in the image takes away a bit from the colors. I can´t see any exif info here, but an there are a few ways to work around this, both while shooting, as well as when post-processing (PP). First off, shoot RAW. This takes space, and will make PP necessary, but for an image like this for instance, you can change the exposure afterwards, lightening it. Another option is to use a higher ISO value, as this will increase the light sensitivity and might give a lighter image. Try experimenting with the shutterspeed also (and use a tripod, of course). Going with software I would work a little bit with levels and curves to try to light up the image somewhat.

Hope this was of some value. TFS :)

Lars-Christian