Reply To: Hobbyist seeking honest critique

[happylinuxguy]

“I’d have to say you seem to have a recurring focus problem. A lot of it I think may be due to working with too shallow a DoF and possibly incorrect placement of focal point. I’m also seeing this with some of your macro stuff where the DoF is inherently going to be razor thin. Now it’s hard to say looking at a body of work and with no explanation of what you your thoughts were or what you are going for. Better when looking at a single photo for comment. For all I know you wanted that purposely. Some of these shots could also be improved by proper sharpening techniques in post. The animal/bird shots come to mind with this comment. The light trail shots I really couldn’t say I care for. Not a big fan of absolutely nothing in focus. But I guess that could also be termed “abstract”.”

All good input.

“You are lighting your glass incorrectly, and the liquid drops could be lit a lot better as well. Glass/translucent liquids are a very difficult subject. Pick up a copy of Light: Science and Magic (Fourth Edition). It is a lighting bible.”

I actually just got that book and haven’t gotten a chance to work through it.  Thanks for the suggestion.

“The liquid stream (pour) is OoF as are a lot of the higher velocity extraneous drops in some of your liquid shots. You are not stopping the motion and they are appearing as a blurred something instead of a defined drop. Again adding to the fact that they are out of the focal plane. Your still life’s could use cleaning.”

I think you’re referring to some of my earlier water drop shots.  I was trying to do them with on camera flash and that really didn’t work well.  My more recent ones were with off camera flash.  I probably do need to close the lens down more and use more powerful flash.  It’s very difficult to get them in focus  with such shallow dof.  I believe i was using extension tubes as well which makes the dof even thinner.

“Now I’m really going to get brutal!”
perfect

“You have some very nice long exposure shots. Bridge fan I see! And I like the moonlit tree as well. Tree fan myself! I don’t know if your camera has a bulb mode or not but you might try stopping down your glass and taking longer exposures. From what little I saw it looks like you are limiting to 30 sec. Bump the ISO if necessary and don’t underexpose. Tripod (naturally), mirror lock-up, remote shutter release, all the precautions and good techniques.”

My camera does have bulb mode.  I was kind of afraid of getting too much noise if I do really long exposure.  I use a tripod (although I could probably use a better one), use the remote shutter release or timer mode.  My camera’s mirror lock up is only available for sensor cleaning, not to use while taking pictures.

“With these I think your composition is really good.”
Thank you

“I’ll leave the people shots to the people people!”
Makes perfect sense.

“You have some nice stuff going on Happy. All in all the biggest overall thing that I can see is that you might do some DoF/Focus research/experiments and get a handle on your focus issues. I would bet that if you have questions about what has been said here you would get some straight up, no BS answers and advice.

And as for the lime/knife shots? A man after my own Heart!

https://youarenotaphotographer.com/forums/topic/when-life-gives-you-lemons/”

I really appreciate all the time you took to look at my pics and give feedback.  Your lemon/knife shot is ridiculously good (imo).  It must have taken a lot of time and patience to get that right.