I have many more, but I'm not going to drown you guys into C&C'ing my pics all at one time, so Ill do three every other day. Maybe give me some pointers, tips. Im wanting to go pro. Give as much C&C as possible.
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Help me out... please
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I have many more, but I'm not going to drown you guys into C&C'ing my pics all at one time, so Ill do three every other day. Maybe give me some pointers, tips. Im wanting to go pro. Give as much C&C as possible.
Ok I am not a pro but I will start with some things from MY point of view.
Photo 1: flash too harsh and you can't immediately see what it is, I thought you took a photo of worms until i looked closer and realized its a chain. The color is just too even. Maybe a large aperture on ONE element of the chain that is clearly defined?
Photo 2: It's a jeep in a shed converted to mono color. Nothing else. To make it interesting, change view point, maybe a bit lower and a different angle?
Photo 3: It's a shed. If that's the focus point, what makes it interesting or stand out? Remember, the photo ALWAYS needs to tell a story and this one doesn't. There are thousands of shed just like it, what makes this particular one stand out?
Just my 2 c. All three could be improved by just changing small things.
But then I am not a Pro so I can be wrong.
//F
Photo 1: flash too harsh and you can't immediately see what it is, I thought you took a photo of worms until i looked closer and realized its a chain. The color is just too even. Maybe a large aperture on ONE element of the chain that is clearly defined?
Photo 2: It's a jeep in a shed converted to mono color. Nothing else. To make it interesting, change view point, maybe a bit lower and a different angle?
Photo 3: It's a shed. If that's the focus point, what makes it interesting or stand out? Remember, the photo ALWAYS needs to tell a story and this one doesn't. There are thousands of shed just like it, what makes this particular one stand out?
Just my 2 c. All three could be improved by just changing small things.
But then I am not a Pro so I can be wrong.
//F
First one. I can see what you're trying to do, but I don't think it's a very strong image. For an image highlighting the geometric shapes of the chains I think I would:
Second one I think is the weakest of the three.
I quite like the final image... the cabin is certainly a character-ful subject. I think it would be better if:
What sort of professional photography are you planning to get in to? If it's stock images - I have to say that it's a tough market and you'd need to do a lot of work to reach a competitive grade.
Most professional photography is probably either people based or commercial. If this is your intention, you should start practicing and choosing subjects with this in mind.
- Crop in a lot closer
- Either make just one link in focus, or make the whole plane in focus - the fact that the top 1/2 of the frame is soft is distracting
- Take more care with composition. I'm not sure the random spaces and bits of straw work.
Second one I think is the weakest of the three.
- I think you could do more work with the post-processing and toning to make the image 'pop'. Need to up the contrast.
- From a composition point of view, I think the van looks slightly mis-cropped missing the wheels off.
- As a central subject the van isn't that interesting.
- The cabins in the background are distracting. Would have been better to use a wider aperture to throw them out of focus.
I quite like the final image... the cabin is certainly a character-ful subject. I think it would be better if:
- Composition needs to be improved. Track in the foreground spoils it a little for me, maybe the image would look less busy if you got closer and we only saw grass
- Wire fences in the background are distracting. A wider aperture would have thrown them out of focus.
- Wire attaching to the corner of the cabin is distracting. I'd consider removing it in post.
- I think some sharpening and vibrance/saturation work would bring the colours and conrast of the brown wood out better.
What sort of professional photography are you planning to get in to? If it's stock images - I have to say that it's a tough market and you'd need to do a lot of work to reach a competitive grade.
Most professional photography is probably either people based or commercial. If this is your intention, you should start practicing and choosing subjects with this in mind.
Wow. Thanks for getting down to the nitty gritty and explaining this.
as for that distracting wire, it would be almost impossible to remove that, because it is the power source for the entire shed. lol. long story...
And for photography I kinda wanna have a wide verity of things. Im gonna be minoring it in college. But ill probably go commercial. i dont know yet.
Professional photography is about producing top-quality work, at every time of asking, to meet clients' requirements. And this is just the beginning: there are so many other aspects to it... whether you plan to shoot weddings, portraits, stock images, forensic, medical, etc, etc...
You need the right attitude. I don't mean to be rude, but asking people on an internet forum for "tips", and to comment on what are essentially snapshots, is probably not the right attitude. Check out courses & colleges, read books, shoot lots (and be your own critic...), talk to professional photographers and research the photography business in a more systematic way.
By 'in post' I meant in post-production on the computer. Only took 20 seconds...
Attachments
College: Soon
Books: Got some
Talking to pros: ...Hmm?
lol thanks for the help
Oh, like that. Lol ok XD thanks again
Ok in all fairness you stated you are THINKING abou the wholepro issue. Could be a different story in the end
Now as much as I hate to say it commercial and professional photography nowadays very much includes post processing on the Computer so consider getting Photoshop or Photoshop elements and/or a professional RAW processor in oder to get the most of the images. And then familiarze yourself with the tools for photographers that these tools offer (clone tool, curves, sharpening etc.) and use them to your advantage.
Getting the picture "right" when you shoot it is of course still the main goal since that is how you learn properly but sometimes you just can't help it.
I think you will see HUGE difference in your photos in the long run.
//f
Now as much as I hate to say it commercial and professional photography nowadays very much includes post processing on the Computer so consider getting Photoshop or Photoshop elements and/or a professional RAW processor in oder to get the most of the images. And then familiarze yourself with the tools for photographers that these tools offer (clone tool, curves, sharpening etc.) and use them to your advantage.
Getting the picture "right" when you shoot it is of course still the main goal since that is how you learn properly but sometimes you just can't help it.
I think you will see HUGE difference in your photos in the long run.
//f
I agree with FlosseR. You can't be a pro and shoot jpeg. You need to shoot RAW and learn how to process the images. I learned photography using film and large format cameras. Large format forced me to really learn to look at the image before tripping the shutter. One of the good/bad things about digital is that it is so easy to shoot 100 shots and toss out 80-90 of them. Film also taught me the importance of the darkroom. The digital darkroom is software that will process the digital negative - RAW format. PhotoShop will do this as will LightRoom and Aperture, which you have.
I have a degree from a four year college in Fine Arts with a major in Photography and have taken four quarters of PhotoShop from two different trade schools. In spite of this overload of training, I'm not a pro.
When I was in Kalamazoo, I messed with my lens at 2.8 with no flash. The image was really dark, but I was still able to salvage a lot because I shot it RAW. As a jpeg, it would have never made it past the first edit. It's trash.
Dale
I have a degree from a four year college in Fine Arts with a major in Photography and have taken four quarters of PhotoShop from two different trade schools. In spite of this overload of training, I'm not a pro.
When I was in Kalamazoo, I messed with my lens at 2.8 with no flash. The image was really dark, but I was still able to salvage a lot because I shot it RAW. As a jpeg, it would have never made it past the first edit. It's trash.
Dale
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I'm not going to lie, that recovery is very impressive! Was this done just using aperture or LR? Was the area selected (via brush etc) to stop the window being overexposed?
Thanks for the compliment. I did it with PhotoShop CS3. I'm still stuck on iPhoto...
This one is a bit better. The other was saved down for email. I maxed the fill light and set the recovery to around 40. The window didn't blow out because I was working in the shadows of the file. It amazed me.
Dale
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It really is one of the strongest arguments for RAW shooting.
Of course, exposure recovery to that degree still tends to lead to a photo where the color and highlights of the main subject look slightly "off" to my eye. There's almost an HDR sort of vibe, if that makes any sense.
Note: I'm not trying to nitpick - I made pretty much the same mistake on a photo I took last week (although in my case I'm not actually sure how I managed to underexpose it)! It's just the way I felt when I saw both your recovered image and how I felt about the final result with the one I took. The salvaged image was certainly usable for the web (which fortunately was what its intended target), but it might not hold up well for print work. But in any case it's better than having nothing, which as you point out would be the result if you were shooting JPEG.
Unless you're literally shooting hundreds and hundreds of frames per day every day, 3 pics every other day is too many. Try distilling those "three every other day" further so it's "once a week" or something. It will probably teach you a lot about what a good photo is more than random people critiquing the many snapshots you would put up.
I have been shooting RAW lately but cant seem to import them from SD to the mac, also I recently purchase CS4. photos #1, 3 were also shot RAW but could import them to Aperture
Thanks for the compliment. I did it with PhotoShop CS3. I'm still stuck on iPhoto...
This one is a bit better. The other was saved down for email. I maxed the fill light and set the recovery to around 40. The window didn't blow out because I was working in the shadows of the file. It amazed me.
Dale
Again WOW! I just wish sometimes that recovery would work so well!
Your cameras RAW format may not yet be supported as Apple is very slow at releasing the updates. Try software update and if not you may have to stick to photographing JPEG for the mean time!
Apertures way of importing RAW files is combined with .Jpeg so I got that out of the way, so ill be posting a couple RAW shots with there edits. see where to go from there...
OH is the "Art Institute of Pittsburg Online" a good college for photography?
Picture 1. The "blur" or "defocus" looks artificial (too much so.) Remove the dry grass.
Picture 2. The Jeep "cut off" makes it feel incomplete. Remove the long thin object going diagonally over the wooden post (on the right).
Picture 3. The Shack is cutoff, pull back the shot a tad more. Remove what looks like a rope-line extending from the left roof, and remove the branch that extends diagonally down-left just touching the mailbox.
Picture 2. The Jeep "cut off" makes it feel incomplete. Remove the long thin object going diagonally over the wooden post (on the right).
Picture 3. The Shack is cutoff, pull back the shot a tad more. Remove what looks like a rope-line extending from the left roof, and remove the branch that extends diagonally down-left just touching the mailbox.
Some RAW shots with edited ones too...
Heres a couple of other shots from the other day.
RAW
EDIT
RAW
EDIT
RAW
EDIT
hope six pics dont get me banned. :/
Heres a couple of other shots from the other day.
RAW
EDIT
RAW
EDIT
RAW
EDIT
hope six pics dont get me banned. :/
^ I was getting pissed at my old flash and just took a snap of Kevin. It was for email. My intent in posting was to demonstrate the power of shooting RAW.
^ I'll give it some thought...
Too bad I'm not a mod...All of the RAW edits show good improvements over the originals. Keep working with it and you, to can salvage a snapshot of your nephew!!
Dale
Thanks Dale. I ordered a couple of Bryan Peterson's books today, and downloaded a **** ton of podcast on my ipod touch today. Im gonna attempt to stop posting "snapshots" and study up. Only posting if I need help.
Spent about 5 hours on these today, and used about 5GB of memory. and I shot RAW, and these are the edit, and I think they came out well. What do you say? C&C?
ISO 100
18mm
f/5.6
1/15
ISO 800
18mm
1ev
f/5.6
1/320
ISO 100
18mm
f/5.6
1/30
ISO 100
47mm
f/5.6
1/100
(My Fav.)
ISO 800
39mm
1ev
f/11
1/30
ISO 100
18mm
f/5.6
1/15
ISO 800
18mm
1ev
f/5.6
1/320
ISO 100
18mm
f/5.6
1/30
ISO 100
47mm
f/5.6
1/100
(My Fav.)
ISO 800
39mm
1ev
f/11
1/30