Hi Garry
Firstly, a very warm welcome to both the Academy and to the Forum. You are right, at the moment you can’t upload images directly to the Forum – this is something I am looking into getting changed – but believe it or not it will cost a bit of money to enable that functionality, so it is difficult to justify it at the moment with so few members posting image for critique. When that picks up I will be sorting that. In the meantime you have done the right thing and just posted a link to the image online. If you have a direct link to an image (Eg http://somwhere.com/myimage.jpg) you can use the IMG button to include it in the post. But a link as you have post works just fine – I can see the image and that is what matters.
On to the image itself. That church is not the easiest of building to photograph – I had to goes at it morning and afternoon while we were there and didn’t get that many images that I was happy with of it. So with that background, I think you have done a reasonable job on this image and I think the “quirky angle” works with it. I also think the extra work you have done to bring out the colour in the sky was the right decision.
A couple of things to keep in mind and to think about. You have clipped the cross of the top of the left tower – this may have been due to the Instagram cropping – if it is please ignore that comment. The other thing I’m not sure about is the little white triangle of sky in the bottom left of the image. I would have either move the camera slightly to the right to avoid it or tilted it slightly more which would have removed it as well.
Finally, a comment about the colour/white balance – I quite like the browny/orangy colour of the church in your image, however my recollection (and I’ve checked this with my own images) was that the church was a more grey colour. This colour shift may be due to either having a white balance that is too ‘warm’ and/or pumping up the saturation a little too high. In many ways the colour shift doesn’t matter as it is artistic intent, and I do similar colour shifts in my own images. However, if this was an image you were producing for someone who wanted accurate colour or you wanted to maintain colour accuracy for an image you may need to be a little more ‘gentle’ with the adjustments which can cause it.
The Lutherian State Church in Akureyri
