St Thomas Church, St Helens, Lancashire

[shieldz77]

I am trying to improve my techniques by reading peoples honest C&C on photos. I normally snap people, but felt I had to take this one.

I pass this church every night on my way home from work. It is so beautifully lit. I have tried to obey the 3rds rule. Is there anything I could have done to make this better??

All honest C&C welcome....



Shutter - 1/4 sec
F/stop - f/4
ISO - 400
NO FLASH

[SIMON40]

Maybe shoot a little further away to get more of the church in- or maybe shoot in "Portrait" format...?

[shieldz77]

TBH, I was looking at getting this angle. A bit different.

Thanks for the comments.

[schmintan]

its not bad, but the fact that you can only see the top quarter of the doors makes it feel cropped or cut off.

You can still get this angle, but from further back., just keep the camera super low to the ground (the way i get this is by placing the camera on the ground and angling the lens upwards by leaning it on my wallet!)

How i would take this shot:

1. Look for an angle where the whole church is in view. take from a ground position as described above.

2. Lock in exposure on some of the nice brown stone not too close to the spotlights. good midtone for exposure there.

3. use small apature, f8 or smaller to get everything nice and sharp

4Focus on a part of the church that will be the main subject and then set focus to manual.

4. Set a delay timer, this will ensure when you hit the shutter to take the shot, the camera will have a few seconds to stablize, so there is absolutely zero movement and the image is pin sharp

5. Check the exposure on the back of the camera, ensure you dont have any over exposed bits and that the church is correctly exposed. you will have some underexposed sky but what can you do, its night time!