buddleia in a dappled sunset

Howard's suggested crop is quite good, but I like the fact that you can see hints of sunset through the dark trees on the left.

So do I (on the left), but compromises sometimes have to be made, and overall composition has to take priority.

You mean like this one of Hatfield House?
www.ipernity.com/doc/286827/52069426

That's good composition without compromise, though the picture is slightly dead-looking; although the subject is authentically historic, it's not the most interesting.

I sometimes wonder if you're D-luded when it comes to composition.

When I praise or favourite any your pictures, I must be.

But not when you D-grade them?

Most of them offer no potential for doing that.

You are welcome to do either.

You can do it for me. Just pick from the list -

* Not enough lead in
* Too much lead in (crop suggested)
* Gaudy (over-saturated)
* Dreary (not gaudy enough).

One of those, I'm sure, can be said about every one of them, as it is about mine.

You've already suggested a crop, you old square.

Yesterday in Hampshire I saw (for just a few minutes) patches of sky of such a deep and vivid blue that I tried looking at them with and without my tinted glasses on because I couldn't believe my eyes. If I'd caught them on camera they would, whatever I said, have been dismissed as a digital artifact.

So why didn't you?

Because it wouldn't have been believed.

It would if you'd just taken a normal picture and not messed about with it.

The incredibly blue sky was visible only through trees which in themselves didn't make a picture. In this shot -

the blue is a digital artefact, but the real sky I refer to was in reality (albeit only for a few minutes and only in one patch) that colour.

If only in one patch, then more likely an anomaly in your vision.

I don't think so. Very blue skies do occur in nature; and this was probably the bluest I'd ever seen or ever will see.

With the possible exception of the Bryce Canyon in Utah, in November 2015:

Blue-sky photos do sometimes come out that colour,
but whether it's actually that colour is a matter of perception.

Colour temperature can be measured objectively (independently of how we perceive it). For studio work, professional photographers use a colour temperature meter (similar to a hand-held exposure meter).

Measured with such a device, the sky in my shot, above, and the actual sky would have been close.