There are so many technical things wrong with this photo, I don’t even know where to begin. A better photographer than myself would have just pitched it, I suppose. But there are a lot of things about it that I like, and I’m not likely to get out there any time soon to try again, so here it is…
Tower Stairs
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It’s not all that bad. If you could have figured out a way to not wash out the right side from that patch of light, a “normal” person at least wouldn’t have been able to see anything wrong with it. Neat place.
Thanks, Todd. Things I don’t like about this photo:
–First off, it’s very blurry. It was dark in there, and a combination of focus that wasn’t quite spot on and slow shutter speed resulted in a picture that was blurry. I cheated and applied tons of USM to get a tolerable web-resolution image (it’s still very blurry at the top right) but those tricks wouldn’t work for a higher-res image or a print.
–The other major thing is that the exposure’s not as good as it could be. The blown out windows are pretty much unavoidable, but I should have tried to pull in the light patch on the wall. Those details are gone even in the NEF file. Not only that, but a lot of the detail in the shadows near the top is lost in the noise.
–The EXIF data for this one tells me that I shot it at F/8. If I’d been paying attention I could have just opened up to F/4 and gotten 4x the shutter speed.
That said, I really like the composition and the color, and the way the light plays off the walls. I’m just kind of annoyed at myself that it could have been much better if I’d just slowed down a bit and pulled out the tripod (or just braced against the wall) and taken a couple of bracketed exposures. Live and learn, I guess.
And the watchtower was indeed pretty cool. Definitely worth visiting if you get out to the Grand Canyon.