I like the photo. Great concept and I DO like that you chose black and white for it. In this dark black and white, the shadows tend to blend in with the structure, though. I would try to lighten it.
Lovely design there, Cade, but I have to agree with the others in regards to the shadow areas. I opened this up in CS5 and checked over the dark areas (even my expensive, calibrated display is likely to slightly clip the shadows) using the info window to see where RGB 0,0,0 might be found - and there is a lot of it. By contrast (pun possibly intended), there is very little highlight clipping going on - only three main places, with some tiny points elsewhere. While I will usually agree that it is best to expose for the highlights in a scene, I think this is one where it would have been best to go for the middle ground. If you'd shot in raw (which perhaps you did) you could have done just that and then pulled back the highlights with the recovery tool in your raw processor (or Lightroom or whatever) and probably kept the highlights to where they are now, but you'd have more detail in the shadows. I'm not actually averse to shadow clipping (even Ansel Adams used large black spaces in his work at times), but in this case, having a large amount of pure black right in the centre is a distraction. I don't mind the black around the top, but the centre being clipped makes the image lose the viewer's focus.
Perhaps it is the conversion you used, rather than the original exposure. If so, try a less contrasty style of black and white. Or, try localised contrast (using layer masks) so you can show off the patterns in the railing shadows yet maintain detail elsewhere.
Still, I think this is just beautiful. You should, if at all possible, do it again!
@jinximages Wow thanks for your imput! Not taken and I am gonna try it some more cuz I want to turn this shot in for my photo class along with the one I did a couple days ago of the zig zag shadows on the steps
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bit too dark for my liking...
Perhaps it is the conversion you used, rather than the original exposure. If so, try a less contrasty style of black and white. Or, try localised contrast (using layer masks) so you can show off the patterns in the railing shadows yet maintain detail elsewhere.
Still, I think this is just beautiful. You should, if at all possible, do it again!