Hi Necko,
Good to hear from you again.
You asked, so please take this as a critique (which is just an opinion!) and not criticism.
- color tone/density of image doesn't make sense with the sky chosen (sunrise/sunset because of the pink clouds). If really that time of day, the left face of the building would have more ambient light on it and the tone of the image (notably the concrete/etc) would be much warmer.
- The angle of light on the bitmap trees doesn't match the angle of light (and color of light) on the building.
- Because the face of the building that we see is lit somewhat, I assume that the sun is rising or setting behind me ... and so the colored clouds are what we call 'alpenglow' here - reflected color seen in the mountains. If the sun is behind me, then the only way the building would have so little light on it with the sky looking that way is if there is also a mountain behind me and the sun has not come up over the mountain. If that's true, then the lighting is fine.
😉 One of Dwight's rules that I like, though, is to show things as they will be remembered, not as they are. Chances are someone would remember such a dawn (or sunset) scene as brighter than what we see here.
- the image has no focal point, as the building has no discernable entry (feng shui "mouth"). Perhaps remove some trees - or make them semitransparent - and use a splash of sunlight over the entry area.
- speaking of 'entrance' - the chain that runs along the roadway has no break in it, so there is no way for a stopping car to let a passenger out who would then walk into the building (without stepping over the chain). The scene needs an 'invitation' to the viewer, not a roadblock.
- the camera position feels like it is about 1m off the ground. Consider raising it to human height.
- sky looks like it was processed in PS with the 'emboss' filter. If anything it should be softer. Consider blurring the foreground sidewalk in PS a bit too to define a focal plain around the building.
- Dwight's trick: foreground is too light and might be darkened from the lower edge up with a gradient, again to add focus on the subject
- another Dwight rule: add 'noise' to your sidewalk texture ... looks way too smooth.
- Is the low structure with the blue roof at left (a bus stop?) important? If not, crop in more on your building.
- the car seems out of focus, rather than motion-blurred. A common motion-blur trick is to blur the trailing edges of things, but keep the leading edges more in focus ... and to even smear the trailing pixels like in a cartoon.
- the scene still feels a little sterile even after all of the above because there is no life (other than the speeding car). But, perhaps no people are awake at this early hour of the morning?
Just my opinion, and only because you asked.
😉
Karl
One of the forum moderators
AC 28 USA and earlier • macOS Sonoma 14.7.1, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB