Kenneth Taylor  


Southern Living by Kenneth Taylor

October 2024 - Southern Living

About the Image(s)

Taken with Canon Powershot from moving train.


This round’s discussion is now closed!
5 comments posted




Rick Hulbert   Rick Hulbert
Wonderful . . .
I love the scene.
The only suggestions I can make are two fold.
1. I don't know if you can recover some of the detail of the building faces on the left side by reducing the highlights.
2. The left and right columns on the first floor deck appear to be ever so slightly splayed out. Ideally they would each appear perfectly vertical . . . just as your human eyes would render them.   Posted: 10/09/2024 15:21:23



Bruce Flamenbaum   Bruce Flamenbaum
Great shot. The lovely quiet house surrounded by the verdant forest, is almost fairytale in nature. I half expected to see a gray haired grandmother sitting in a rocking chair on the porch knitting.   Posted: 10/09/2024 16:52:29



Robert Atkins   Robert Atkins
Hi Kenneth. Again welcome to the group and thank you for this lovely first image. It is definitely a building where the character comes through, and you've found very flattering light under which to shoot it. I'm picturing the challenge of shooting from a speeding train. It turns landscape photography into something akin to street or sports photography. Not much time to think through the shot - I imagine you just have to react.

I think the biggest thing with this image is as Rick points out that part of the left side of the structure looks a little blown out. I tried to correct this in the image below, but did not have a lot of luck. Maybe the original has more room to fix this.

I'd make two other suggestions. First, the image has an overall yellowish cast, likely from the warm light. You may want to keep some of this, but for me it is a bit strong. I look for color casts in photoshop by duplicating the image, applying an "average" blur filter which reduces the image to a single color. If it is visibly not gray you have a color cast. You can then use a curve layer, and the gray dropper, to take out the color cast (and then just turn off the visibility of the averaged layer). You can reduce the opacity of the curve layer to put as much of the color cast as you'd like back in. I did that with your image and dialed the opacity back to 80%. I mention this approach because I am not sure everyone know this trick. Works in photoshop and hopefully in photoshop elements as well (but I'm less familiar with elements).

Second, I would crop in a little from the left. The large tree trunk near the left edge is sunlit and substantial and tends to pull my eye over there. So I'd crop just inside of that to eliminate it. Having done that I might crop a little from the right, so that the distance between the building and the left/right edges of the frame is the same. That symmetry tends to make the image stronger. Finally I don't think you need quite as much at the top, so I might crop down just a little from the top edge.

Again, these are just small things. It is a very nice image.   Posted: 10/13/2024 19:01:43
Comment Image
Kenneth Taylor
Thanks for the feedback! I was able to get rid of the yellow and the image looks much better   Posted: 10/14/2024 17:20:40



Haru Nagasaki   Haru Nagasaki
Hi Kenneth,
Thank you for sharing.
A good capture. I especially like yellow casted. It reminds me of old photo.
Nice start!
  Posted: 10/19/2024 02:56:13