Royal Palace

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[mblomq]

Today I was in downtown Stockholm and took some shots of the Royal Palace. This time I tried to be more careful when tonemapping the image...
What do you guys think?

[DAVE RHUBERG]

I can see the care you put into your adjustments, compared to your earlier posts.  I like that, and think you should continue to practice.  It looks to me that you can adjust for what you want, rather than taking what you get.
If I can make a suggestion, what is it you wanted from this picture?  I like it, it has promise, but isn't there yet if I am presenting my opinion.  You could give it less aggressive detail tonemapping (there is a little halo around the building, a little too much contrast in the clouds) and take it to a LDR image editor to adjust your contrast and color to make this a realistic picture that has a full range of tones and nice detail. OR you could use less aggressive tonemapping, and reapply, and reapply, and/or make layers and blend to make this an exciting creative experiment HDR. Either could be nice, but I think it looks like you are limiting yourself by trying to finish the picture too early.  It is a little plain, has elements of both, could be taken further now that you have the ability to use discretion in you application of adjustments.
I congratulate you on you obvious effort to look for and correct faults.  Now don't be afraid and use your new awareness of HDR artifacts and how to correct them  to push to the picture you really want.

[honez]

From a composition perspective, it's a little too centred and "snapshotty" for me. The main subject is the Palace, but there's no real placement and statement about the palace, just a "here it is in the middle of the shot".
There's a pretty big lean to the left too (check out the verticals of the building like the closest corner) which is fairly distracting.
The only real colours are in the small patches of orange, which aren't part of the main subject, so I think you need to do something to reduce the overall grey blandness of the shot, without overcooking the whole thing.
I think Dave Rhuberg is right in that the tonemapping is good, but it requires some traditional post-work to reduce the overall flatness and composition issues.
Cheers,
h

[SpiffyPix]

I agree with the previous posts, which were both excellent crits.