I'm working on a site about Baptist Churches in Wales at the moment but I need a bit of advice. I'd like to have some scenery as the main picture, but I'm not sure which to choose.

Advice would be appreciated - bearing in mind this is a religious web site

The last three don't show up for me, so I'm down to the first three.

Honestly, dude, I don't really like any of them for your specific site. None of them have churches in them that I can see. Why not get your photographer on and go shoot a pic of a church? It'll be an exclusive picture, and it will be topically relevant.

Oh sorry about those last 3 pics - I typed in the wrong addresses and then previewed the post and they had mysteriously disappeared.

Anyway, thanks for your opinion Adam. I wasn't sure either whether I should have got pictures of churches, but Mid Wales is a very picturesque sort of place and I thought the scenery would be quite fitting. One of my first sites ever (updated several months ago) was for my church and I guess I could use a photo of the church itself as the picture - the only problem is that it looks a bit dull really

I'd just like to add all of the pics are original, taken by yours truly and I've implemented the middle picture on the site today - I'm not a photographer as you can see so the pictures aren't all that great (neither is the weather)

Hi whym,

The photos don't really catch the eye. If I was to use a photo I would either use something striking like a sunset (I know.... cliche) or mess with it graphically in some way, maybe using photoshop (inappropriate...?)?

I'm not sure just how complicated you want to get with this, but an idea I had was to use Terragen (FREE environment generator/modeller) to create a time lapse weather scene - maybe a sunset like this, or just some racing clouds with beams of sunlight shining through. There's an example here of a Terragen generated landscape.

If you wanted to go with that idea, a much, much better 3d natural environment modeller is Vue Infinite and they have a free learning edition of their software that never expires. I don't know how you would stand on using it for commercial ventures like this - or even if this is a commercial venture.

Anyway, this is just me getting carried away with something you probably don't want to get involved in

Thanks for the advice gringo. I think that would probably be overkill for a project like this which probably isn't going to attract a large volume of visitors, but thanks for the information about Terragen - that was really interesting.

This isn't really a commercial project - its a sort of community web site really and I'm going to add a couple of links on it to my hosting site to get some quality traffic from local people (my target market).

I think scenery would be great, but you need something that pops. The photo you have there now is kinda washed out. Something vibrant would work better, maybe like this one:
http://www.123rf.com/photo_357879.html or
http://www.123rf.com/photo_437922.html

Those are both Wales, but I have no clue what part
Are there any historic churches you might be able to get shots of ?

Originally Posted by LadynRed

Are there any historic churches you might be able to get shots of ?

Hi LadynRed. Thanks for your advice. Baptist churches aren't very old (couple hundreds years max. normally) so they tend not to be the sort of beautiful historic churches we live to think of and I'm guessing you are thinking of.

I'm getting the picture none of those pictures are that great (I thought the first one was nice, but oh well). I expect I can get a good picture of deserted Welsh countryside fairly soon sometime so maybe I'll post these on the forums then.

Well, personally I think they are all great pictures. They make me really want to come visit Wales.
I am leaning towards the last picture because it seems like it could be symbolic. A "path", you know, like God will show you the path for your life.

Yes I was thinking along adding a text to that image - something like "I am the way"

Yeah, "I am the way" sounds good. I really like that!

Not sure where to put this on the picture itself though - what do you suggest? Also what colour writing do you think?

Originally Posted by gringo

maybe using photoshop (inappropriate...?)?

There's nothing inappropriate about using Photoshop! Before we had digital cameras, people did the same kinds of things - adjust the contrast, color saturation and balance, etc - in the darkroom with noxious chemicals, and by choosing particular types of film. In this case, someone would shoot on Fuji Velvia, ideally 100F, which is known for its beautiful but unrealistic color response. In context, Photoshop is par for the course.

I like the second photo. It's got the best composition of the three; if you gave it some pop it could be pretty attractive. I'd use the curves tool to add contrast, then channel mixer to make it more vibrant, a touch of sharpening, change the cast from cool to warm, a little dodging and burning, and it would be a lot better. I can show you a quick sample if you'd like.

The third one might be more emotionally directed toward a church, but the clipped highlights bother me, personally. I don't know if anyone else would notice or care?

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

There's nothing inappropriate about using Photoshop!

I wasn't saying there was!

I was worried about messing around too much with a photo of a natural scene (like a sunset) - whether using photoshop or banana milkshake - so that it became something else, just for the sake of being 'eye catching'. Sorry if I didn't make myself clear.

It's a common view that Photoshop is cheating or transforming reality ... we use slow shutter speeds, particular films, chemical treatment, and such in film landscapes all the time. Ansel Adams famously spent 10 years getting a negative ready before he was ready to print it...

This photo uses a 3.2 second shutter speed to blur a waterfall, making nature look in a way humans don't see it ... but that's because a narrow aperture lens works in a different way the eye does. Both are equally accurate representations of nature; neither one is 100 % accurate, but the way we see versus the way you can record it with a camera show different ways to view the same phenomenon.

Hi everyone. Well I don't have Photoshop (it's way too expensive for me) but instead I do have a version of Paint.NET for Mac called Seashore.

About design 2 - I've tinkered a bit with the contrast and things but I can't see any large difference - it still looks dull. Forrest, is there any chance you could download the pic and do a bit of tinkering with it? I understand if you're busy or something.

Thanks everyone for your advice on this subject

For whatever reason, I can't delete files from my web server right now, and I don't want to have someone else's work on there indefinitely. So I'm attaching it instead ... a bit less convenient than being able to embed it directly in the message, but...