I collect pictures of sculpture, but I didn't have time to isolate the sculpture in this garden from the other features of the garden, those slates and blue gravel in the foreground, for instance. This is pretty unsatisfactory but I feel there was a picture there somewhere. Can anyone help me see what it might have been?
Well, I've thought about it a lot, and here is what I decided to do with it. Look at www.pgallery.net/rogerama/image-54645.html and you'll see it's pretty close to Neil's first suggestion although I also tried to take into account Matej's suggestions, in so far as I could without going back to the UK to take the picture again! The link takes you a folder in which I have quite a few statues and sculptures. I've been collecting them for about 18 months. Oh, I suppose I can attach the JPEG here, too, to save people having to cut and paste the image URL into their browsers. Here goes.
Thanks, Matej, for that very interesting and stimulating comment. This is exactly the kind of comment I was hoping would be given. If I have the chance to revisit this site I'll have some good ideas of what to do, thanks to you! I'll also bear in mind your suggestion of simplifying and selecting when there are a number of lines running in slightly different directions. Good one!
One problem that I see here is that there's several lines running at different angles, making the photo appear sort of tilted, in a confusing manner. There's the hedge, some buildings in the background, the fence, the little wall underneath the sculpture. I think that if these lines can't be aligned, you should try to eliminate as many of them as you can. Of those that you can't, think carefully about which one you would naturally expect to be level, and align your camera with that one.
If you want to have both the sculpture and the blue gravel in one photo, you could try an even wider lens, and point it down so that the top of the sculpture would be just below the top frame of the photo - so that the top of the hedge wouldn't be seen. However, I think that it might be a better idea to concentrate on one of the objects rather than try to have both of them equally strong in the photo. For the metal sculpture, you could go closer and use horizontal framing. For the slates & gravel, a really low point of view could work. That way you could maybe get some of the sculpture into the background, and play with focus to achieve different effects. It could also be interesting to photograph the slates & gravel in such a way that the viewer wouldn't be able to tell what the scale is.
I think I see some tree trunks reflecting in the sculpture, so another idea would be to find an angle from which the reflected trunk and the tree growing behind the sculpture would seem continuous.
Wow, Neil, I'm really grateful for the PS work. Either of these is better than that "cram it all in and hope it looks good" shot I actually took. I guess what you're saying is I needed a longer focal length lens. I was thinking that people might suggest what to concentrate on, what angle I should have used, and perhaps what looks the most photogenic part of the garden rather than trying to save something out of that mishmash. I personally liked the slates and blue gravel but in the few seconds I had I just couldn't think what to do...
Interesting problem I think you are right about there being a picture here. After messing about with PS7 I've come up with two ideas that feel OK this is No1
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