I learned a valuable lesson last week when I took a leap and joined up on the AusPhotography forums. After joining up and posting in their Introductions section a few people asked me to show them some of my work.

So after flicking through a few photos I settled on this one which was a Park Bench by Merimbula lake:

Ricktas of the AusPhotography forums was kind enough to give me the following feedback “hmmm. I think you have a great shot here, though the distant horizon at the top looks cluttered. Crop the top off, just above the darker blue line, clone out the yellow blob top left, to simplify it and it improves a lot.”

Although have never really been a guru with editing photos, I pulled together what skills I had and came up with a revised edition of the same photo:

Looking at the photo I now see that Ricktas hit it on the head like a nail. The photo looks so much more simplified without the extra clutter on top and I think it looks more pleasing (please tell me your thoughts).

I have learned a couple of things from this that I will keep in mind for next time. Firstly, I really need to focus on the composition of my images as I take them. Up until now I have always pretty much just kept my eye on the centre of the image, rather than really looking around the whole frame and seeing if I can cut parts out that may not belong, or clutter up the image.

The other lesson that I picked up is that some photos will (by their nature) require editing post production to touch them up and really give them their added flare. This was something that I had not considered before, I thought I could just take a great photo and that was that.

I want to also say a big thank you to Ricktas for his awesome advice, and now I hand over to you, what do you think of each image (the original and the remake). I am always open to constructive criticism and hey… I am still learning too.

Stuart