Condo

[glorybound]

I don't know how you guys pull off these stunning images. Here is my feeble attempt

[pailhead]

You definitely need to lose the blurred branches and the splotches on the bottom! I like to use this frame effect myself but i find it really hard to achieve. This has nothing to do with 3d as much as it does with traditional painting and drawing. You need to figure out how to make a nice composition. I learned that by using the DOF effect like this, you may actually make your scene seem like its in a really wrong scale. I think morbid angel posted a couple of images waaaay back, showing some space station corridor thing. With DOF i was expecting a cockroach to crawl by the camera, without it, a space ship.

Your colors here are pretty off too, the flowery thingies are too saturated. The lack of a proper horizon is quite noticable, so just try to cut a decent photo, or arange some 3d trees in the background. Seems like you're having a vraydisplacement issue on the wooden walls so you either need to increase the resolution in the parameters, or get a better displacement map. (i'd render one out myself in case of these giant logs, or better yet model them!).

[glorybound]

Do you have any good books on compisition you could recommend. I have read everything I cold get my hands on over the past couple years so I thought I was getting the hang of it. I am currently ready Jim Leggitt's book called drawing shortcuts.

[pailhead]

These were recommended for me a while ago:

Link to a cgarchitect thread

but so far i haven't obtained any. Business has been really slow

After seeing Peter Guthrie's work, i decided to find some books on architectural photography, but so far i haven't encountered any.

[glorybound]

great Pailhead, thanks. I have the first book and I'll research the others.

[LarsSonparsson]

I think that there is 2 big problems.

1. Color balance / saturation.
- it just feels that all the channels are so filled.
2. Compositing - lack of space - centered view

I'm not an expert at all, but I had to test few things to your image.
Just played with colors. Erased the three from the right side (badly).
I would like to see more space on the right side. Now everything is too tightly framed.


-LarsSon

[yyk]

I'm no expert on composition, but I'd move the camera to the right and camera target more to the left side of the building so that you'd get more space on the left side and maybe get a slight change in the angle so that the garage side would get some highlights off the sun. I'd position the building so it would take about 2/3 on the right side of the image, and comp some nice distant background to the left to give impression of depth. Again, I'm just going with my gut feeling

[Spikeadeliv]

Gentlemen
its a case of the 'Golden Rule', never have anything dead centre, the trick is to have any strong horizontal or vertical element at one or two thirds in from any side of the image (as yyk mentions). It is difficult when the client or the subject matter dictates a central position, then the trick is to 'balance' the image with another element and try to mute/tint with blue anything further away and warm up elements nearer. With the 'hanging branchand flowers' stylie, it should enhance the image not take over.

laters

spike

[simmsimaging]

It's not so feeble Bobby

I agee with some of the earlier comments, but here are some thoughts I had:

I think the vignette effect you want with the leaves is fine, you just need to refine the shape a bit more, particularly on the right, but i wouldn't take out only one side

The materials need more attention to add a bit more subtle detail to bring up the realism. When the mats are a bit off it always makes the whole image feel a bit off, even if the rest is working ok.

A sky with just a bit more detail (in the right areas) will give you most of what you need to adjust your composition.

Remove some of the foreground stuff and/or tone down the brightness in places, and that would work better IMO.

I agree it needs a horizon line too.

Add a bit more raggedness to the edge of the grass to help tone down the hard line it creates and improve the realism a bit.

/b

[glorybound]

Here is an update.

[pailhead]

Id definitely go for the other side, now its very cramped.

I'm not sure why, but perhaps because its in the shadow, and it's much closer to the vanishing point, the right side could be much closer to the frame than the other. Here's a real quick and sloppy go at this. I'd definitely crop the lawn since its asking for attention as a foreground element. As such i think it needs to be very realistic and clean in order not to be distracting. I cropped the height when extending the frame to the left, now i think i may have done it too much, but the point is, house needs some room to breathe on the left side.



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[pailhead]

Cropped some more of the lawn, extended the sky, and moved the house further to the right.

Think its definitely better.



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[glorybound]

Condo

but now we are smack dab in the center again. It's possable that my subject, three garage doors, is the issue .

[glorybound]

I desaturated it a little and cropped like Pailhead suggested.

[EricCamper]

Bobby...

This was getting closer before I thought, but I would like to see more of the RIGHT side.. So maybe try and rotate the view about 5-10 degrees. Then compose... I dont think there is anything wrong with it in the MIDDLE, but perhaps the focus was off... I think that is what they meant...