This photo failed.... so how to make it better?

[Travis]

This picture is a failure to me because I wanted the sign atop the door to be emphasized..... how would you deal with this? keeping some perspective of the building while emphasizing the sign??

[Marko]

This is going to be a silly question but I'll ask it anyway.

Is there a way to shoot the building straighter on?

[Travis]

lol... i take it your suggestion is to try shooting from another angle??

i do have shots from other angles, but they didn't work out.... the two lamps in front of the building got in the way of the sign I wanted to include. I will post one tonight when I'm at home.

[kiley9806]

is it possible to get on the other side of the fence/barrier thing thats between you and the stairs? maybe if you can get on that side, keep most of the straight up angle, but level it off enough so you can focus in on the sign? frame the building closer, getting just the clock at the top, less dark sky, and closer in on the sides, more cropped near the top corners of the building. does that make sense? and i dont know if thatd work - just a suggestion. i get what you mean, by wanting to emphasize the sign. looks like a really nice building to have as a subject, and i like your compostion idea. i think youre almost there...

[AcadieLibre]

Out of curiosity, from my monitor it does look like you achieved what say you are trying to accomplish. It just appears that it is not showing the way you want because the image is too small. How does it look at a larger size? The sign appears highlighted, I can almost make it out. But I am running at a 1650x1050 resolution and photos of that resolution are pretty small looking on my monitors. From what I can make out it looks like your very close to your goal. Not sure outside what you have done what you are looking to do. The sign looks highlighted, are you talking about having the lower part of the door darker? Just trying to get a better idea of the goal here.

[beetle8]

is it possible to get on the other side of the fence/barrier thing thats between you and the stairs? maybe if you can get on that side, keep most of the straight up angle, but level it off enough so you can focus in on the sign? frame the building closer, getting just the clock at the top, less dark sky, and closer in on the sides, more cropped near the top corners of the building. does that make sense? and i dont know if thatd work - just a suggestion. i get what you mean, by wanting to emphasize the sign. looks like a really nice building to have as a subject, and i like your compostion idea. i think youre almost there...

I agree, I think getting on the other side of the fence will improve the image right off by getting the fence out of the image.
Then maybe closer to the sign to get the detail you want but a wider angle to include the entire building. This'll distort the image but can either be understood or dealt with in PS.

[Travis]

thank you kiley, acadie, and beetle....

kiley/beetle - i think at the time of the shoot i was consumed about fitting the whole structure in the frame... i'll go back and try again up the stairs a bit more.... but I think it's gonna cut off the clock at the top and the building sides at the bottom.... and beetle... fyi i can't get any wider... this shot at 12mm which is wide as it gets for my lens collection...

acadie - if you zoom the sign you can see how vintage it is.. i think it adds the feel of the building... just like you said.. you can "almost make it out"... this is not good enough... i want the sign to be clearly visible while at the same time showing as much of the structure as possible..

i tried some local sharpening on the sign to make it stand out.... but only nominal results as you can see... i think the sign is too small for my objective...

and Marko here is the shot from another perspective.... the lights are a killer...

thank you everyone... i'll try again...

[AcadieLibre]

Just re shoot it from the same angle with a longer exposure time. Did you use automatic or manual settings? From your original angle I think what your trying to do could work. Just let us know what your settings were and if it was manual or automatic.

[Travis]

I only shoot manual on stuff like this

f7 2.5sec iso200 matrix metering @ 12mm