Hi Chris,
This is a well observed photo. I like it for its beautiful symmetry and the overall blue tonality, yet with the subtle burst of warmth coming from the middle of the frame (an ideal position for leading a viewers eye into the centre of interest). I also like it for the simple story it tells of people using a ferry to commute across one of the many rivers that populate the Vietnamese urbanscape.
Now, the one thing that lets this image down is the overall greyness of the picture. I would guess that you underexposed this image about one stop as you made it.
If you open this image up in Photoshop and have a look at the histogram you will see that most of the image fits into the darker two thirds of the tonal scale. You have shadows and mid-tones but hardly any highlights. This is rather surprising given that you have blue sky with white clouds in the back of the picture.
There are two really simple things you can do to improve this image.Tthe first is to open the image in Photoshop and just adjust the Curves. Pulling the white marker over to the toe of the histogram in the curves graph will make a world of difference.
As another option though, this image really lends itself to a HDR effect. In the example below I have opened the image in Nik Software’s HDR Efex Pro and applied a filter. Not bad eh!
As mentioned, this is a great shot and my advice to anyone if you get the opportunity to make images like this is to shoot in RAW mode. It really does help to ensure you can get the most information from a photo.
Good effort,
Anthony
Image Doctor's edited version
