Reply To: Opinions, Please!

[cameraclicker]

I looked at your profile and went back to look at your previous post.  Look at the light on the faces in your own photos, then look at the light on the faces in the link you provided above.  Your photos have better light, better shadow, more detail because the faces are not blown out.  As was pointed out before, the wedding photo is quite good.  Part of that is having good exposure and part is that you got great expressions.

A few thoughts:

You have a Canon T5i.  It has a pretty impressive computer in it and if you are trying to shoot in full manual mode all the time you are wasting the processor and working way too hard.   Figure out when you have to use manual mode and when the other modes and all that automation can help you out.  For instance, the photo of the family throwing leaves, ideally you want the people pretty sharp, the leaves pretty sharp and the far background soft.  You need to select an aperture that will give enough depth for leaves and people but not so much the background is sharp.  You also want a shutter speed that is fast enough to freeze the leaves and the family’s appendages.  This is a shot that would probably benefit from manual everything.  By comparison, the child with a basket and a toy is a simple shot.  Auto-focus on the child’s eye, set the mode to Av and select a small aperture to blur the background, set ISO to some low value if there is enough light, let the camera worry about shutter speed, while you worry about framing so her head and feet don’t get cut off.  Exact framing is a bit challenging with a Rebel since the viewfinder doesn’t show the whole frame, just 95%.  But, if it is inside the viewfinder, it will be in the frame.

You are in (or near) NY?  That city should have some of the best art galleries in the country.  Visit them.  Study the art, looking at composition, lighting, poses, and colour.  Go through magazines and look at the same things.  In photos you can see some of the lights reflected in the eyes, for a hint about how a photo was lit.

Youtube has lots of excellent videos that explain photography.  And some that unfortunately are not very good.  Watch some videos, try out what you can for yourself.  See what works.  Ask questions if there is something you can’t seem to figure out.  You will have more skill in no time.