[fionaB]

didint want to keep this colour....... but it didint work for me in mono........ so i had a play with mixing a bit of both...........sooooo does it work or not? cant quite make my own mind up.

[lolyton]

I don;t mind the idea of it, though maybe the balance is slightly wrong, the left of the picture either needs to be less saturated or the right needs to be slightly more saturated. i would go for less on the left!
I think once the balance is right, and maybe a little of the FG is cropped it will work very nicely.

[Angela]

Fiona, how much colour is in the houses at the back? it might work better leaving them in colour and putting the church and gravestones in mono perhaps?

[fionaB]

very little Angela which is why i opted for the abbey in colour...... i know what loly is saying but he prob is the same beacuase there is so little colour i dont knowif it would balance it or not

Fi

[skipper954]

Hi Fi

I really like the colors of the abbey. However, I feel that the FG is too dark, and that makes the abbey the focal point. I don't know if you meant it to be, but I think that the FG gravestones have the most interest if we could see them a bit more clearly.

It might be interesting to lighten up the FG, then add varying amounts of color back in in different places. The possibilities boggle the mind.

You can do that in your spare time.

skip

[fionaB]

lol spare time? what is that?????? thanx muchly as ever Skip

[water]

Fiona,I too would like to see more detail in the foreground/headstones.Do the houses have any significance for you in this shot?.If not,if you had taken a few steps to the right making the headstones and church the main focus plus the bonus of minimising the amount of 'plain' sky in the shot would,in my opinion,reallly have helped the shot?!.The amount of shots I have taken[and discarded] because of 'a few steps left/right' is legion.But its all a learning process and with digital [no film costs] I try to take quite a few different angles of the same shot [and still end up discarding the majority!!!].As to the mono/colour mix,I am not sure.

[Dabhand16]

I'm with Skipper on this one. The FG neds to be lighter, and I think the pale sky exaggerates it. I quite like the sky, so the first thing I'd try is to get a more balanced lighting in the shot.

As regards to the composition, the church is a bit tight to the top of the frame, but I think a portrait crop might work just to the RHS of the middle gravestone. (Look away, Rob) You may need to clone any bits of tree creeping into the RHS if you do this.

[fionaB]

yeps....... i can see im going to have to go to work on this one! lolol

in regards to leaving the houses out if i had moved to the right i would have got a huge amount of scaffolding that is up over part of the abbey! mayt have to go back wwhen they have finished the resotoration of part of it!

many thanx people, as always its very much appreciated

Fiona

[water]

Ha,scaffolding!!!.The bane of my life also.Iona Abbey.Lochranza Castle to name only two and too far to go to re-shoot.

[fionaB]

Originally Posted by water

Ha,scaffolding!!!.The bane of my life also.Iona Abbey.Lochranza Castle to name only two and too far to go to re-shoot.

yep these historic scotland people have NO consideration! lol
Doune castle had it, stirling castle had it, jedburgh abbey has it........... it does NOTHING for our pictures! lol
i guess im lucky in that being so central its fairly easy for me to return to "most" of the places and the good thing is that it doesnt cost me anything to get into these places, and some of them are damn expensive!

Fiona

[Rob Barron]

I like your version fiona, it has got something muted yet interesting about it.

I just thought I'd have a look and see what could be done in mono though I went for sepia as it gave it a better feel. Before converting to mono, I made separate selections of the three main stones in the FG and also of the white house in the background which sticks out like a sore thumb, taking the eye away from the interest which is the abbey.

I lightened the three stones using curves so that when changed to mono they would stand out from the background. Conversely, I dumbed down the house completely so that it blended into the BG alongside the other houses, again using curves.

I then converted using Channel mixer. I would normally prefer to use Lab mode but I wanted to keep this in RGB in order to get the sepia. I know I could have duotoned it but I preferred it this way. I added the tone by simply using the Hue tool, easily the quickest way andgets decent results.

After flattening all layers, I added a slight touch of s-curve to push the contrast up a little. I then put a shade around it much as you had originally and put back your title and copyright details.

See what you think anyway, this isn't better, it is really a different picture but I just wanted to see how it would turn out. Hope you like it,
Cheers,
Rob :o)

[fionaB]

yep Rob much better..... the stones now stand out as i wanted them to! many thanx

fi