Hi Cindy,
One thing that I have never been good at is juggling, or gymnastics, or anything else that requires a good sense of coordination and balance. For one thing, while most of my school friends were busy chasing a ball or climbing trees in the after-school hours, I was practising music. At a good guess, I was probably one of the only kids in my class who could not ride a skateboard either! Call me a nerd!
The one thing that I have developed a feel for over the years though, is visual balance… knowing where to position different elements within the photograph to create a sense of visual comfort for the viewer.
Now, I mention “visual comfort” because there are images where we are trying to make a viewer feel comfortable and this sunrise is one of them. Of course, you can also use balance (or the lack of it) to add tension to a photograph. Balance is a fun thing.
Now with this image, I feel that we are missing out on the balance for one of two reasons. The first is that there is simply too much depth to the photo, and to resolve this, the simple option is to crop the foreground. That is what I have done in the image below.
Another way you could have added balance to this image would have been to include more scenery on the left of the frame. Either option would work.
Now… there is one other adjustment that I would make to this image. In the central area where you have that building, the shadow areas are grey, rather than dark. I would use the Burn Tool with the range set to Shadows just to darken this central area of the photo some more.
Once you have done all this, I think the image will look rather balanced in every regard.
Cheers, Anthony
Image Doctor's edited version
