Just a practice shot

[dstone81]

http://flic.kr/p/e1vAEd

This was just a practice shot I took today of my daughter while we were outside today. I know it isn’t that good and I have my mommy goggles on at the moment, but I like this shot for some reason. I guess because it shows some of her personality.

Feel free to critique. I need it and I want to learn.

[dstone81]

She was playing in the grass looking at bugs. Hense why she is crouched looking.

[dstone81]

I also like this one.

http://flic.kr/p/e1pUbn

[dont.care]

That angle is bad especially the way she’s looking up at you and your camera…  the last one is good rule of thirds- however

you if you crop below the elbow, try to keep the hands intact.. above the elbow, above the knees, at least 1 ” from eyebrows if you lop the top of the heads off ( an you should only do that in tight portraits close up for creative purpose )

 

she looks to magenta to me; better color balancing is in order

too much to tell, must go now

 

p3

 

[dstone81]

Thanks for the info. I apprieciate it. I need a lot more practice. Just about everything I shot yesterday were tossers. I started my flicker account so I can see my progrss over time. I know I need to work on focus and white balance and color saturation. And composition. Pretty much everything.

[dont.care]

Bah; ‘Angle’, I mean.

[kbee]

You’re lucky as you have some victims to test your photography on – your kids! I wish I had a couple around just so I could torture them with my camera. 🙁

Reiterating what some of the others said: the angle on your daughter in the first photo you posted isn’t very flattering. To be blunt, she looks quite scary like she’s about to jump up and bite my face. :O The overall tone also reminds me of an old Polaroid. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought this was a scan of a photo taken from the 70s. Maybe that was the intention, because I know the retro/vintage look is in, but it sticks out from your other photos and seems to be an anomaly instead. As dont.care said, a little too reddish for me.

Are you shooting with manual or auto zoom? Some photos are a little blurred, or the focus is on other things instead of her (http://www.flickr.com/photos/93828462@N02/8537306231/in/photostream/ like that one).

Then there’s a photo like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/93828462@N02/8538414474/in/photostream/ Was it a windy day or was she moving the grass? The foliage in the foreground is conspicuously blurry. A faster shutter speed would help to minimize those motion blurs.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/93828462@N02/8537308121/in/photostream/ I actually quite like this photo, though I would have lightened it up just a little. Has some thirds going on, though the grass in front of her is a little distracting. I also like http://www.flickr.com/photos/93828462@N02/8538408038/in/photostream/ . With sharper focus, maybe a 1/3 stop brighter, these would be nice shots.

Definitely keep up the practice. I’m guilty of shooting some really blurry photos because I thought I had good control of the manual focus and would come to realise I didn’t – especially when using a large aperture with shallow depth of field, slower shutter speed or trying to track a moving subject, like a toddler. I also need to seriously get an eye examination as my eyes are getting awful and untrustworthy. I lost a lot of potentially good photos because of it, so either I go auto for on the fly, chasing-the-toddlers-around photos (thankfully my lens has fast AF), or I use manual when I have more time to set up the shot to make sure I’ve got it quite how I want it e.g. close-up portraits where I want to define the eyes/lips what have you from the rest of the face or macro shots.

What you’re doing is good, though – keeping a running track of your progress is always a great way to watch yourself learn and grow. It’s the best way to see that you are improving, and encouraging to know your efforts are paying off. I’ve locked away my previous photos from view on my FB page, but they’re still there for me to go back over from time to time, just to see the difference in what I’ve learned.

It is also a great way to remind me that my family and friends are full of rubbish, because they loved each and every one of those horribly out of focus, poorly composed, bad white balanced pics. 😀

As you’ve said, you’ve got a lot to learn, and it’s obvious you’re doing that with your practice shots. So keep on going! 😀 What camera do you use, by the way?

[dstone81]

On a few of them I was using manual focus and then I switched over to auto focus. I have a manual zoom on my camera. Right now I am using a fujifilm HS20exr. I am saving up my money for a Nikon but I don’t know which one I want yet. I am still researching. I do mostly still life and nature shots but I want to become a more  well rounded photographer so I want to learn  everything I can.

[dstone81]

Oh and PS. It was windy that day.  I am thinking about focusing on a skill every month and then combining that skill with the one before it. I also want to try a 100 day challenge.

[kbee]

Fair enough! I figured it was windy, and I just was curious with what you were working with. I’m not familiar with that model, but my older camera is a Fuji. First serious camera I, as a poor college student, dropped some serious money on.

Sorry about the great big wall of text I posted earlier, too. I get ‘chatty’ from time to time. 😡

I definitely agree with you on the working on individual skills at a time, then combining them. (Recently I’ve started to use metering for exposure to help take the guess work out of my shots. That and using the histogram made my impromptu photo shoot this weekend a challenge and yet so much fun. 😀 And the result is awesome!) And definitely, a X Day challenge would help with that. 😀 I would consider it myself, but I’m terribly lazy. Oops.

[dstone81]

No worry. I apprieciate the fact that you did go into detail because it points me in the right direction on what to look out for in my photos and how to improve. This month my main focus is working on focus and next month is composition.

I have a meter on my camera too that I use, I also have the Historgram meter too. I need to work more I using them to my advantage. I just figured out the other day that my camera actualy has a focus check on it so I turned that on so I can better check my focus.  I am already seeing an improvement. I used to use a fuji s700. Then I got the HS20EXR which is larger, more powerful and has many more functions and controls. It is a decent Bridge camera but is no SLR with interchangeable lenses so it is really limited on what it can do. However in the hands of a pro it can take some absolutely gorgous photos. ( I should know because I let one of my pro friends borrow it right after I got it.)

[dstone81]

I lightend this picture a bit just using Aviary on Flickr. I need to get a better program for editing though. Is it any better?

Before

After

[dstone81]

The main reason I am asking for critiques is one for my own personal growth and two because I am working on a project for my mom for mother’s day. I want to give her a professionally mounted collage of photos that I have taken of her grandchildren and I want to make it my best work ever. So over the next few months you guys are going to be seeing a lot more of my stuff for critiques and I am sure you guys are going to have a field day with it but I think I will come out of this a much better photographer and will learn so much from ya’ll. And for that I want to thank ya’ll in advance for ya’ll’s wealth of information.  I want to give her something that she will be proud to show off in her home and when people ask she will proudly say her daughter took those photos (even though I know she would say it no matter what my photos looked like) But I want to be proud of what she is showing. KWIM. I want o learn and be proud of what I accomplish.

[kbee]

I like what you’ve done, but maybe not quite so light as it blew out the background and white areas a bit too much for my taste. The warmer hue was nice though (and it seems that’s a preference of yours, judging by the few examples you’ve posted lately with warm sepia tones). If you had Photoshop or PSP (I am regrettably not familiar with Flickr/Aviary), you could just gently lighten up her face without blowing it out. But again, this is just my opinion. I prefer lighter photography myself, and she has such a gorgeous face I’d want to highlight that.

Good luck on the collage! I’m sure if you continue to post you’ll get some honest feedback. I recently put together a book for my brother in law, covering the birth of his daughter up to her first birthday. Whew, did I have some editing challenges to do. (A year of learning = lots of mistakes to fix.) I was proud, however, to include the final photos which showed not only her growth, but mine as a photographer. Very rewarding.

Maybe in a year you’ll find yourself looking at the collage and nit picking something out of it, and I know you will do your justice to it now. It’s just the nature of learning and time. Regardless, with the amount of time and effort you put into it today, your mother is gonna love it to bits. 😉

[dstone81]

Yeah Aviary isn’t a very good editing software it is just what I have at the moment. It doesn’t allow for selective lightening. That I why I want to get Photoshop. This payday I think I am actually going to invest in Photoshop or lightroom.  What you pointed out was one of my biggest issues with the edit that I did. It blew out the background when I was really just going for her face and body.

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