built 17th century, older than your civilisation

Also might I add, by definition, Oxford in the United Kingdom is old. Most buildings are 200 years older than the Australian or American (excepting the indigenous populace near exterminated by the settlers) civilisation. When you point to a piece of architecture in either of those countries and say "this is an old building" just think of Britain and our monuments, buildings and castles... they, are old.

Ahh Oxford. That would have been in my list if I'd been forced to guess. Have a friend who's just moved to Cambridge and I'm looking forward to visiting her and checking out the surrounds.

I'd like to add that you do NOT need to give this building a vintage look. How rediculous, it's already a few hundred years old, what more do you want?
@ mooch - You've got to admit the cars spoil it a little...

Thanks for the positive comments everyone. I am currently rather angry ChriZ has just had his baby hand featured and I have had a very long winded rant on there. To compare, this image has a relevance of 3.3 and yet his 3.4.

Relevance is in the eye of the beholder.

duncmc: Quite flattered, I seem to be developing my own style.

As for the cars well, they are part and parcel of Oxford life.

Watch out for this image, it is soon to be mentioned on my site in terms of its future usuage by a high profile company, I am sure you will all have heard of, as they are worldwide.

Mooch, I gave this a 4 on relevance, so why no 5?
The building might be old.
But the old aspect of the building does not seem to be in the center!
The picture as a whole doesn't make an old impression, it is from now, and I guess that could be a reason.

mooch wrote, "built 17th century, older than your civilisation."

I'm sorry to tell you that you are wrong on this point. If you are speaking of Ana's civilisation, I believe she is a member of the same transmigrated civilisation of which you are a member.

If you are speaking of civilization in North America, you are still wrong (although I see you have referred to that), so I guess you are meaning that the building we see in the center is older than the U.S.A. Declaration of Independence, in which case you would be right.

...and didn't you guys exterminate the Neanderthals? I know you exterminated something.
(and surely, by now, you know that I am having some fun with you.)

I think we exterminated most indigenous populations didn't we? Especially in the crusades, you have to love religion. I took for granted (admittedly) that Ana is from the U.S. of course this should have been verified by myself.

Yes, from the U.S. and I refer to the civilisation that was spawned post U.S.A. Declaration of Independence. The nation we currently refer to as the United States of America. Not the tribes of before.

seekingfocus: like this?

http://tobiasreynolds.com/gallery.php?photo=Qm9kbGV5IExpYnJhcnk%3D.jpg&cat=Oxford

Exactly!

I love ultra wide angle, though it might bother others that the parallel lines are distorted.

I find that angle to be far superior to the one posted here. Matter of personal taste though, I suppose.

What I like:
-Composition seems stronger; higher horizon, less 'empty' sky.
-The dominant (central) structure seems much more impressive and the overall image is higher impact.
-The semi-circle of grass in front is not cropped and seems to tie in better compositionally.
-The two cars left of center are not so dominant... still I *might* consider cloning them out. That's minor, IMO.

Nice work either way... Now, if only we could work on that sky. Was this shot in RAW? If so, you could quite easily work on this with two (or more exposures) using some careful layering. The result could turn this very good image into a great one.

I'm torn between the two versions. I agree with every point SeekingFocus makes above, the the altervative shot induces a bit of vertigo, relatively speaking, and I don't think that is always a good thing. The distortions don't bother me from a photographic perspective because I'm a wide-angle fan and people, on average, are used the the effect.

So, mooch...25 comments! Doing pretty good for yourself in the Comments Department with this image.

SeekingFocus: I always shoot RAW. When I first started my blog I just shot jpeg and the dynamic range is just too limited, take a look at my other submission to this site, I think you can work out the one I refer to as it has the same sort of tones. Problem with this shot is shooting more than one exposure. This was shot from a church tower with little room (two people struggle to push past one another) and too many tourists. So, the multiple shots required for HDR use us out of the question. Also this image was shot as part of an assignment (alluded to above) and on that day I covered 4 towns and 150 miles. It was dusk, I was pushed for time and had to bully my way up the tower as the women didn't want anyone else up there. The shot I pasted the link into has the building even less dominant and with a current relevance rating (after 25 ratings) of 3.28 I fear that it would get even more hammered.

The vehicles were there, annoying but nothing in life is perfect and this reflects that.

I will show you this image in situ when it is complete. Needless to say I am pleased with it. I am not so pleased with its rating.

As for HDR, I have used (a few times) the HDR processing built into CS2 and can say that I have had no luck with it (even after putting in 7 images across the exposure range). Any ideas?

King: Cheers, the comments would sit better with me, were I featured ;)

mooch,

I was not necessarily suggesting HDR. There's a good chance that could ruin an image like this.

But if you were to process two images from the same RAW file - one for the building (which is what it seems like you did here), and another for the sky. Then open it up in photoshop with each image on a different layer and blend your new 'better' sky in with the original image.

Not exactly HDR, but still cheating of sorts. =) Also, the problem of having moving subjects and the ability to shoot only one frame is addressed.

I've never been a huge fan of HDR and tone mapping; it's really only useful in a small handful of situations... more often than not (unless that's what you're going for) it will give you very unrealistic results. The few times I have used it, I have used PhotoMatix, which I feel is far superior to Photoshop's built in HDR engine.

SeekingFocus: One of my favourite HDR images:

http://www.chromasia.com/iblog/archives/0608152029.php

I have considered photomatix but it is $99 (£49) and I have other priorities right now. Chromasia uses it, to good effect. Shooting one image and processing that is bad enough. Shooting 5-7 is just torture but the thought of an evenly exposed (almost perfect) image, interests me.