C&C - First DSLR Shots

Rainyface

Hi, thanks to some good advice on this site about a month ago I purchased my first DSLR. After about 250 shots I think I managed to get about 5 decent ones. Here are my best ones in my opinion, but any comments, good and bad would be appreciated. They are no where near the standard of practically all of the pics on here but I would be interested in seeing what you think!

Thanks
1

2

3

4

5

Mensch Maschine

Hi,

When taking photos some questions that fly into my head when I take photos are:

Well, the 1st. It's St Annes - at the pond?

1) Well, what is the photo show/telling us?

2)What do I want to others to see in my photograph?

3)How can I dipict my photo and it's subject matter to get the best goals form 1 & 2 ^

The second photo is more interesting to me. There are people in the shot. It's candid. However, to me, the viewer, I can't see what the people are looking at (seals, am I right?) :P Now, I'm left looking at people who are interested in something I can't see. You know what I mean?

The third photo is even better again. You can use rule of 3rds in shots like this, depending on which is more intersting - the sky or the water for example. Well done.

The fourth, is good. Here you are using depth of field. You have a subject (the tree) and it have nice textures etc. You are also using your instinctive 'rule' of thirds.

The last one, again, ask those questions at the start of my post. The textures are good I suppose. The tones are off. If it's black and white you are goin with, you have to make sure blacks are BLACK not a shade of grey, whites are white and grey is grey. That photo is mainly different variations of grey. I don't know if you are processing them via Photoshop or anything but there's easy ways of touching your photos up with this. Losts of tutorials online etc.

Hope that helps. Sorry if I sound silly or mean.

Keep it up.

daycent

They're all fairly different, I'll just give my honest opinion. Don't want to sound harsh but i think you need to give more thought to composition and what you're trying to capture.

1. Nice enough depth of field and texture on the wall. I'd try cropping out the right hand side entirely and leaving just the wall maybe.

2. This looks very cluttered to me. I would like to have the emphasis more on the father and son. You could try cropping away the people and up to the child's feet in this shot.

3. This is a nice enough scene but that doesn't always make for a nice photograph as I've learned . Again I'd try cropping away the left hand side and try tp put emphasis more on the boats. There is a weird blue hue to the sky as well, don't know what that's about.

4. Not much to look at here for me. You have put the tree off centre which is a positive for composition I suppose. It's lacking a bit in saturation and the sky is blown out.

5. This would be the best for me, nice texture on the bark and good composition.


Of course all this cropping isn't ideal. You want to try to get your composition right in camera.

And remember that getting a nice photo can be rare. As you get better you will increase your chances though!

Just my view.

Rainyface

Mensch, Your powers of observation are impressive - Correct on all counts!

Thanks for the responses, much appreciated. I had considered some of the cropping bits but when I looked at them, I thought it took something away from the shots. Back to the drawing board for me so.

On the photoshop question, I'm using a very old photoshop elements but have ordered elements 8 so will hopefully get that shortly. I need to figure out the best way of using the features etc (and pretty much everything else by the sounds of things) before I get some decent results.

On the saturation point - How would I go about improving the level of saturation in shots like number 4. Cannot seem to find anything which gives me any info.

Cheers

Mensch Maschine

All those places are some of my favourite places to chill!

I'm not sure about the capabilities of the software you have now but or anf I'm not framiliar with Elements but in Photoshop titles the levels feature is usually in (main bar, top, left) Image > Adjustments > Levels.

It will look something like this...



Now, the triangles that are there. One of the left represents darks, middle one mid tones and the right - highlights or britghter tones.

As you can see, the image represented here only seems to have info from midtones up so it must be very over exposed. To get blacks, black etc you wanr to bring the triangle on the left over to the start black graphy image.

Likewise for the triangle on the right and adjust accordingly. There's also an Auto Levels funtion if that's too much.

There's also Image > Adjustments > Shadows & Highlights
Looks like this....


Also just going into the contrast settings. Try get what supposed to be black, black & whites, white.

A little off topic but there's some really cool tutorials on youtube...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_yE9zfx2vI

I have to brush up myself.

Hope some of this info is helpful!

Rainyface

Yeah it is - thanks.
So If I understand correctly, I select a chanel, grey, white or black and adjust each one seperately using the slider.
Do I need to shoot in Raw to do this effectively or will the jpeg function work as well? Havent done anything in Raw as of yet.

Will have a look on you tube also

Mensch Maschine

Great.

Well, it will work with j.pg alright. Open RAW in PS immediately brings up a window with different helpful adjustments to choose from before you go into editing normally which is cool.

Yes, you got it right. It'll be much easier when you open up and play with the settings yourself. I'm terrible at trying to explain things, lol.

When you've played around with it post some of the results and let us see so far!

newbridgemom

i think you are doing really well for just getting a dslr and shooting 250 pics! not every pic can be a winner and sometimes you don't have enough time to make the perfect composition.
i think you have a good understanding of depth of field and how using a smaller aperture can blur your background to focus on the subject. i would like to see you using this concept a bit more colourfully. Maybe focusing on something interesting and bright with a duller background? Some of your pics just seem to be mid-grey and not enough contrast or pop.

why don't you download the free Lightroom 3 Beta? It's free until the end of April and its easy and powerful!!!
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/