Hello Peter, I just logged on and was greeted by your PAW for this week. I'm not sure I'd have taken a picture of that scene as it strikes me as rather "plain." However, there's a reason for that ... the lighting. It seems that you missed "magic hour" by a bit. The peak of magic hour is really only about ten or fifteen minutes long, and there's about a half hour or so before the peak when the light is great. It's warm, it's bright enough to allow the rendering of shadow details and provide for subtle color differences. I believe this photo suffers from being shot too late.
The sky has no character, no luminescence, and the water appears murky, rather than alive and reflecting the colors of an earlier sky. There aren't enough lights on in the buildings to make up for that lack ... lights in windows around dusk can add a very warm and welcome feel to photos taken at such times. Then there's that vertical object on the (viewer's) left. It's a distraction in such a scene. Here you are, making a photo of a bucolic, traditional lighthouse scene, and there's this obtrusive element in the way, vying for attention, and, in this case, getting it. The framing seems poor, but not knowing what's on the right, it may have been the best you could have done. Still, had there been some space along that side of the image such that the building wouldn't bleed off the edge, the composition may have been improved quite a bit. And, had it been possible to make that correction, the that other "thing" on the left may have been left outside the frame. I give you credit for being able to hand hold a 400mm lens so well. Shel "Peter J. Alling" wrote: > > Once again I'm opening myself to criticism comments and possible ridicule. > Taken at dusk a couple of weeks ago 400mm lens hand held. Forget the > shutter speed but it was long. > > http://www.mindspring.com/~pjalling/PAW_--_LightAtSaybrookPoint.html