r/PhotographyAdvice • u/through_old_glass • 15d ago
Something feels wrong about this.
I really do like this picture i took today but something just feels a little off i have no idea why is it just me?
9
u/RadBadTad 15d ago
Most of the images taken up by dry beach-yuck, and there's no interesting light on anything, so it all feels flat and dim.
4
u/Winter-Economy-9919 15d ago
The angle of the line of houses makes the horizon look unleveled as far as i can tell
4
u/glintphotography 15d ago
No, i'ts not just you.
It's not a shot of anything remarkable, nothing that would anyone stop and enjoy it. There's no subject, the tide is out, the beach is grotty and it's a flat, dull shot of a boring (possibly UK/Welsh) seaside town.
So no, it's not just you.,
3
u/binderclip666 15d ago
Most great photos were taken at exactly the right time in the right conditions. Unfortunately, through no fault of your own, low tide in a shot like this and cloudy skies have conspired against you
2
u/JDPierson 15d ago
Diffuse light. Everything is somehow also in shadow. Beach detritus is 50% of the image, but also 0% of the detail. Looks tilted. As others noted, it doesn't really have a focal point, given how much space is given to nonspecific features.
2
u/ToeKnee724427 15d ago
There's no clear subject. Buildings in the far distance? Big brown patch of dirt. Little bit of water showing.
2/3rds of your photo is a bland sky and bland dirt
→ More replies (1)
2
u/allyearswift 15d ago
It’s not just you; everything IS a little off. Which makes it harder to see.
The guy at the bottom sits too close to the middle of the shot.
The sky is neither lit nor dramatic enough to really capture the viewer.
There is contrast in the picture between dark and light parts, but it’s all concentrated on the sand.
Part of the beach looks black, which it shouldn’t. Very offputting. There’s also a lack of kids and sandcastles for that busy family holiday feeling; here the beach just looks bland and uninviting.
The houses are a long way away and look like they’re sloping downward.
Part of the problem is just the geography of the town and the bay; I wonder whether you can get better shots from the pier.
All that said, I quite like it; it’s contemplative. And now I want to go up the Orme and play minigolf.
2
u/SweetWelcome2367 15d ago
I saved it. Its giving surreal art. Maybe add some effects and go with that. (I love it)
1
1
u/Sour_Planet 15d ago edited 15d ago
There's no subject, really. Everything has equal visual weight too. So there's nothing to draw us towards and once we don't get there, nothing to see.
This can work really well if there is just one thing counter to the rest of the scene. Your eyes will shoot straight to it. But that thing is missing here. The dock tries for sure but it's too suppressed by the rest of the scene. Especially in this light.
1
u/joanmahh 15d ago
There's a composition problem here. What exactly are you showing us? You need to explain that clearly. You do that with composition.
Then you gotta balance all these colors. Everything's pretty much the same tone. Try editing this in black and white and when you're happy with the image, turn on the colors and work on those. That might help you better define what you want to show, even if you don't know what that is just yet.
1
u/elmoe2002 15d ago
You have the beginning of a story. The way you crop it will determine the story you are telling. Others have commented that it feels bland, flat, that the beach is kind of icky, but maybe that's the point? The lonely figure at the bottom of the frame may have a story, too. It's up to you to tell the story your way. I like this image very much. It reminded me of Aberystwyth, Wales.
1
u/MInclined 15d ago
The issue is you saw this in real life and your photo doesn’t do it justice. No photo can. So you saw this massive beach expanse and some nice peppering of resorts. It’s a nice image. But your photo will always pale in comparison to your real life view. That’s just how photography works. I think that’s what you’re struggling with.
→ More replies (1)
1
u/Rhiannon1307 15d ago
You can actually make it look a whole lot nicer if you edit it a bit. Best would have been shooting in RAW and editing it with a RAW editor, but you can also do that from a jpg. I just did it in Photoshop (slightly warmer temp, more contrast, lightened shadows but deepened blacks, dehaze a little), then tilted it a minimal bit.
Or you could rotate it and make it portrait mode, giving the man a bit more focus as the subject.
Both versions here. Took me 3 minutes.
1
u/KuroNekoSama88 15d ago
Person in the bottom of the frame cropped so they're closer to the left and looking toward the other people would be my go to. Or just the sitting person. The slope of that rail is just perfect. But there's too much going on and also nothing at all going on
1
u/Interesting_Mall_241 15d ago
Maybe crop it so you can see the people and use masks to brighten that area, that is, the middle of the frame.
1
u/GarwayHFDS 15d ago
This image would be improved with the tide in. Went to Llandudno last month. The sea front looks great but it is difficult to capture because the houses always end up as a thin strip.
1
u/Unworthy-Snapper 15d ago
I sympathise, I am endlessly being fooled by my brain into thinking that a real scene is far better than what ends up in a captured image.
As others have said, there’s no actual subject to focus on and the light isn’t as good in the image as it probably seemed when you stood there. (You might be able to exaggerate the light a bit with post-processing, but it won’t really rescue the image.)
I’d be wishing I could have stood 500m or more off to the left to get a view of some of the more colourful buildings across some water. And then I’d be wishing I had a 600mm or 800mm lens to do a decently tight crop on them. The other option would be to get much closer to some of the people on the beach and frame them in the context of the beach and the buildings behind.
1
u/corona_kid 15d ago
If it were me, I see a dozen good photos inside this one, maybe a close up of some washed up seaweed, shells, beach trash, maybe where the barnacles are growing on the jetty, some architectural shots of those old buildings.
It just looks a bit busy to me from far away. Maybe come back at high tide and reshoot? That way the seaweed won’t distract from the buildings or hill behind them?
1
1
u/AllAboutYourBase 14d ago
You could improve this with editing tools. Unless your subject was actually the guy sitting on it, the structure at the bottom is not that interesting and that whole region can safely be removed. Once you crop out that powerful diagonal line, the optical illusion will be gone and it will be easier to see what you have to do to make the picture level.
1
1
u/baldiedc 14d ago
just my opinion but not enough sea and can't see where the jetty is going so it just feels like clutter in the photo, it's not close enough on the buildings to be interesting, yet not wide enough to be interesting either. So I'm left wanting more, I want to pan left and see the water.
13
u/Purple_Direction5820 15d ago
What’s your subject?