I agree with pretty much everything people have said Fi, a cracking set of shots. The only one I don't like (sorry) is the 4th one with the out of focus bird on the ...errr....whatever it is. First one is better with the faux fill-in flash to give us the statue details. But the other three are excellent, like them a lot.
No, the 'ghsot' piper or whatever he is doesn't do anything for me. It makes the picture seem silly when the building without that bit is a dark brooding place with a well composed and well focused shot.
Without a doubt the best is the courtyard. Would like to have seen the converging verticals adjusted so I have had a little play. I took out the converging verticals by doing a Perspective Crop. it does mean I had to lose parts of the sidewalls but it does bring the rest of it straight up. funnily enough, it wasn't so much the walls that were irritating me as the topiary plant in the FG left that was 'falling over'! I also added a touch of negative S curve. That means I did an S curve but took it below the centre line so as not to lighten any of the sky as it would have burnt out and I didn't want it to. I added a touch of saturation to create stronger colours.
I then had a look to see what a mono would look like: didn't like it much so tried a hand-tinted sepia (as opposed to a filter sepia, ie using Colour Balance to the mono and adding yellow and red in a roughly 30/70% mix) and felt happier with the result so am showing you both of those here. See what you think of them, just a bit of a play really, no way lessening your set which is excellent :o)
Cheers,
Rob
