In his response my tutor commented "..... contains very large area of very bright sky. And what that is doing is preventing us from appreciating all the fine detail in the low contrast bottom half of the image which are darker. A grey grad filter or an orange/red filter used when taking the images (not in post processing) would have decreased the overall contrast of the scene the resulting image would have been far more balanced".
It s obviously a valid point and something that I had not noticed when taking/processing the image. Obviously I cannot go back and take the same image again using the filters but I can post process the image to improve the overall tonal contrast.
What I have done is darken the sky and lighten slightly the area to the left of the picture. The effect has been to reduce the dominance of the sky and allow the viewer to see the fine detail in the cliff face and the broken concrete etc.
It is a matter of personal choice whether there has been an overall improvement.
It does raise another interesting point. In both of his books [The Photographer's Eye & The Photographer's Mind] Michael Freeman makes reference to something he calls 'delay'. Whilst inviting the viewer to look at the image other elements are included in the image in such a way that they are not immediately apparent.
It could be argued that in the original image the brightness of the sky immediately attracts the attention of the viewer as there is also detail and pattern there. The viewer then scans the rest of the image and begins to notice the subtlety of the detail in the cliff face and debris. The other elements of the picture. The alterations in the revised image make this progress less likely and risks giving equal prominence to all elements of the image.
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