Hi,
First, let me clarify for those that don't know:
my originals were taken as my first use of my new to me m6 while on vacation.
I refused to edit at that time on my laptop, I don't trust what I am seeing.
I posted them, and others, earlier, un-edited so others could see what the camera could do, kinda ... assuming
people that know me would want some early feedback of what the then newest model could do.
When I returned home, I then did what I do:
crop, lighten shadows, done. That all the PP I do to my OOC Jpegs.
Occasionally I use
Spot Fix, to get a spot of chewing gum out of a sidewalk, ...
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Now to your interesting church photo which I like,
original
I too might have been tempted for your composition of the lampost in the valley of the tower,
but, the flag blew over, narrowed the gap, so the lamp doesn't float fully free. a little closer might have solved a few things: moved the lamp up to float free in the sky, reduced concrete foreground, and lose some of the distracting left side elements. But, it would have obscured the windows to it's left. The solution, my knees don't even want me to type this, was to get a bit lower to position/compose the lamp head higher.
I'm not a big fan of straightening, however you could certainly straighten my edit, just to see it.
my lazy edit (using Windows Photo Editor, my Photoshop would be better)
OK, what did I do,
Any Crop gets you closer to the detail, plenty of that here
crop bottom, lose concrete curb, lose grass with red line in it
crop left side, lose distractions. I compose/shoot wider than I want, always aware of my edges, like the million miles of corridors I visualized while designing Corporate Office Space. Cropping decisions, again examine my edges, get rid of meaningless distraction to the eye, via crop, spot fix, ...
spot fix: got rid of a lot of grub on the sidewalk. I learned a new trick. Usually some of the bottom of the image is obscured by an on-screen message. This time I realized I could rotate the image, move the sidewalk to the left side, use spot fix, then rotate back.
spot fix: goodbye orange blob. here is where Photoshop using cut and paste would have done a better job, just lazy.
Pixels: so far not straightened, however, I have read that it is
best to do your edits together, then save once. I saved, spot, saved, spot too many times trying to cover the orange blob.
So, I would do my edits, save. Them make a straightened copy. After crops, after shadow lightening, after spot fix, so the straightening would only see my retained and pre-adjusted pixels.
Pixels/Straightening: now, when you straighten, isn't it moving, creating new, generally messing with the pixels? My brain sees as it sees, so I am surprised when people point out key-stoning. Architectural Elevations, Real Estate Photos, Interior Photos, ... I see it's value. Again, I'm lazy.
Noise Reduction. I never do any, I take the Jpeg In-Camera NR. The m6 and m7 models have more aggressive NR than prior models. I see no detriment, and that, combined with more aggressive Image Stabilization is the double whammy that let's the m6,m7 lens achieve like a brighter lens.
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I think the stone is a bit bright, if I lightened the shadows myself, maybe I would have cut the highlights 'very slightly'. You get in trouble very quickly cutting highlights, especially skies.
All this yap is because I like your photo.
--
Elliott
I won't critique any further.
