My first submission for C&C

trican

Hi all,

I've been taking photos since Feb (which coincided with me starting a photography evening course) and getting so much help and tips from the members here, I thought I'd post a couple of my pics from the last week for C&C. Please be as critical as possible as I really want to improve!


Waterford:

Morrisseeee

I like no 1 as the path leads me into the photo, its got nice color, its got a nice balance between a bright sky & detail in the foreground (dynamic range).
/I know this walkway (I think), is it Ardmore ?

GhostInTheRuins

The first and last are very nice.

trican

Morrisseeee wrote: »

I like no 1 as the path leads me into the photo, its got nice color, its got a nice balance between a bright sky & detail in the foreground (dynamic range).
/I know this walkway (I think), is it Ardmore ?

You're correct, it is indeed Ardmore! In no. 1, I tweaked the saturation and lowered the exposure to the sky using Lightroom (I shot in raw on my Nikon D80), hopefully not excessively so.

CabanSail

Hi Trican & well done putting some photo's up for C&C.

I can only see two images here at work so will comment on them.

The first one I see has a collapsed fence in the foreground & a headland. You have done well in that it's sharp from front to back, which is always good in a landscape. To me there is not much in the scene & the compostion is awkward. The sky has detail but is not interesting. It's far to heavy on the right. When I was only starting to take photographs a friend gave me advice about balance. He said to look at an image giving elements weight & imagine where you would need to place it on nail in the wall so that it would hang straight & if i's not the middle then it's not in balance. To my eye this would need that nail about 2/3 along to the right.

The second one I see has the seaweed at the front. This is a much better image, though it looks like it gets a bit soft to the back. It would have been interesting to see how this would have worked with a longer exposure & greater DOF. It could also have been better a bit later in the day. The Post Processing of the sky is obvious & clumsy, so detracts from the image.

These are just my comments & hope they help. I will also add that I am not good at Landscapes myself & they are very hard to get right. The stunning shots you get from the good landscape people take a lot of time & patience to get right, often after years of experience & frustration.

trican

CabanSail wrote: »

Hi Trican & well done putting some photo's up for C&C.

I can only see two images here at work so will comment on them.

Its a shame you can't see the first one because in my opinion its by far the best of the three.

CabanSail wrote: »

The first one I see has a collapsed fence in the foreground & a headland. You have done well in that it's sharp from front to back, which is always good in a landscape. To me there is not much in the scene & the compostion is awkward. The sky has detail but is not interesting. It's far to heavy on the right. When I was only starting to take photographs a friend gave me advice about balance. He said to look at an image giving elements weight & imagine where you would need to place it on nail in the wall so that it would hang straight & if i's not the middle then it's not in balance. To my eye this would need that nail about 2/3 along to the right.

I would agree that it lacks any great interest, I hestiated about putting it up in the first place. Thanks for that tip.

CabanSail wrote: »

The second one I see has the seaweed at the front. This is a much better image, though it looks like it gets a bit soft to the back. It would have been interesting to see how this would have worked with a longer exposure & greater DOF. It could also have been better a bit later in the day. The Post Processing of the sky is obvious & clumsy, so detracts from the image.

Yeah I think I shot this with a pretty wide aperture, forgetting to adjust the setting. I guess it might be a good idea to get in in habit to double checking until it becomes second nature or maybe using the depth of field preview, again until its instinctive. As for the post processing, the top right of the photo is very harsh, ulgy and obvious, I should have spent more time in Lightroom getting it right.

CabanSail wrote: »

These are just my comments & hope they help. I will also add that I am not good at Landscapes myself & they are very hard to get right. The stunning shots you get from the good landscape people take a lot of time & patience to get right, often after years of experience & frustration.

Thanks a million for the comments, they were 110% helpful - I'm a big believer in learning from mistakes!

challengemaster

trican wrote: »

I would agree that it lacks any great interest, I hestiated about putting it up in the first place. Thanks for that tip.

Maybe a B&W conversion might work a bit better?