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@glowatski — I think you might have been addressing my comment about stuff jumping into the frame, so I will respond.

I really don’t care who you hire to take photos and I was not commenting on your tastes.  However, it is the photographer’s responsibility to look around the viewfinder to see what is in the picture besides the subject.  At one time or another we all take photos with either foreground or background junk, sometimes both, that we wish was not there.  You might be amazed at how often EXIT signs appear while doing event photography!  When that happens to us (while not shooting reportage, you are not allowed to edit stuff into or out of a news shot) we can employ editing software to fix our mistake.  If I was paying for, or being paid for, a photo, I would expect it to be free of obvious errors.  If it was something I shot on vacation and I just put it on my personal page for my mother to see, I might have different standards.

As far as using a $100 camera from Walmart, yes, it can take good, interesting photos, but for a lot of what we shoot, it is a pain to use so most of us use cameras that are slightly more expensive.    Please check out this show:

http://www.digitalrev.com/article/chase-jarvis-lego-camera/NDAxNjI3Mg_A_A

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So… I see horizons that are not level, some photos that might benefit from a tripod, some strange colours.  That pink one of the house has what looks like a paper clip at upper left, but I think it is part of the antenna attached to the chimney.    I would say they are an interesting collection but not my cup of tea.  But don’t sell your camera and quit, either.  Your photography is just more “arty” than my taste, I prefer more natural looking photos most of the time.  In the news yesterday some painting was auctioned off for a ridiculous amount, and it was a large canvas with a few rectangles of colour painted on it!

I like Orange Sea, but think it might need leveling.  Burning Son is pretty cool but the sun in the sky is “sun” and your male child is “son”.   Run has the feel of running through the woods and gives me the creeps!   I think I would crop DSCF4843 on the left side about where the lower branches cross.  Purple Sea does nothing for me at all, but from the name I can tell it is what you had in mind.  Join some of the on-line photo clubs and enter their contests or check out their critique forums to get a wider view.

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Summer before last, we needed a lot of 4 X 6 prints.  We needed three of some print, two of others and singles of still others.  To save time in the store, I made up 3 DVD’s with the files.   At Costco we handed over the discs and asked for one of each.  Imagine my surprise when three copies of my file resulted in three different appearances in print.  With that behind us, we tried the same thing at Walmart, with the same result.  We don’t have Walgreens here.  Now that sort of job goes to Blacks, a chain camera store that has much more consistent quality.

I think it was Mark Wallace in one of the Adorama videos that said when he heard someone say they like natural light, all he hears is that they don’t know how to use flash.  Of course, in the movie, Quigly Down Under, after using pistols to shoot all the bad guys in a quick draw gun fight, the main bad guy says to Quigly, as he is about to die, “I thought you said you didn’t know how to use a pistol”.  To which Quigly replies “No, I said I didn’t have much use for pistols, not I didn’t know how to use them.”    Looking at Kyra’s photos, I think it may be a case of not having the gear she wants.  I too, like her nature shots.

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@lemonblue — The baby’s headband appears to have been white lace.  Even relatively inexpensive editing programs like Photoshop Elements can adjust colour balance, sometimes called white balance, if there is a suitable neutral colour available as a reference.  White, black and grey items make good references.  If you have digital images, you have something that can be adjusted, at least a little and probably enough in this case.   That won’t fix a bad pose but it will improve the appearance.  You could learn to do it yourself or find someone who understands how to retouch images.  A retoucher can tone down or replace a bad background, too.

@what.dreams — I agree with Nightrose.  If you aspire to be more than a beginner, you need calibrated equipment.  The least expensive is to have and use a grey card.  There are several ways to use it depending on your work flow and what you are trying to accomplish.  You can use it to set a custom white balance and set the exposure in camera, or you can shoot it in the scene to use as a reference to adjust your editing later.  If you are going to adjust later, shoot to raw files instead of JPEG.  The camera throws away most of the sensor data if it makes a JPEG and you may not have enough data left to do a good white balance adjustment.  If you are saving to JPEG, keep an eye on the light and adjust each time the light changes.  For something like four times the cost, you can get an Expodisc which will let you set the camera but it will not serve as a reference in an image.  Something like a Spyder  or Colormunki is a step up, but not a replacement for having a good colour reference.  At the top of the scale are monitors that calibrate themselves.  Notebooks have terrible monitors and the trend is to put the worst quality hardware in, then cover it with a coating that’s so shiny you can do your make up, or shave, with it.  The better monitors tend to have a mat finish when they are turned off.  Room light affects the appearance of your display and also of prints, so you have to be careful of ambient light when editing.  If you do your own printing, then there is a piece of the Spyder system for profiling your printer, the Colormunki has printer profiling built in.  You have to create a profile for each paper type you use.  This little diatribe barely scratches the surface of any of these topics but hopefully provides hints about some of the research you have to do.

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I like 102ou42.png as an art photo.  The rich color of the wood and contrasty lighting are wonderful.  The bride is probably less enamored of the photo because you can not see her face and can barely find the groom’s head and half his body.  If it was shot to a raw file, good editing might make the image acceptable as a keepsake.  Even the PNG file has the data for her face and his silhouette.   Probably a safe bet that both photos would have benefited from a flash, although that may have lead to other problems.

I don’t know if beginners are closed off to help.  Perhaps just to help they are not ready to receive, understand and retain at the time help is offered.

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@soaringturkeys — I was skeptical about ISO 160, but here is the result of my quick test with a Canon: http://cameraclicker.com/Compare/MoreNoise2/Noise_5D_Mk_III.htm

I was surprised by the result!  I think ISO 160 and ISO 200 look about the same.  I think ISO 500 looks better than ISO 400!

Thanks for pointing that out.  As time permits I will test my other bodies to see how they perform.

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On a different computer the first link still takes me to my Facebook page.  The new links work.

I see mixed quality.  I have a train track photo or two in my collection, but I don’t have a guy sitting at a drum kit, in the middle of the track.  The girl in the grey top that looks photoshopped into a scene with a partial brick wall and lots of mould does not appeal to me.  The girl in a dark brown outfit in front of a swirly brownish red backdrop is a good example of a portrait although I would have removed the white dot from the middle of her upper arm.  When I first saw the background, I thought “what the heck” but I think it grows on you.

The wedding set is a similar mixed bag.  The rings in their box with white roses might be better without the fade treatment on the right side but I have seen much worse close-up wedding photos.   The B&W of the bride and groom in the park with bouquet on the edge of her dress has most of the dress blown out.   The blond bride that comes up next, with her bouquet by her chin has a “get on with it, I have to go and pee” look in her eyes, but it may just be the stress of the day.  I have no idea what is going on with the bride and groom in front of the wall with the little metallic looking tiles.  She seems to be reclining, and pregnant?  And, she’s showing the pot end of her bouquet.  I don’t think that should have made the portfolio.  A couple of others have a streaky border effect applied, I don’t think it would make the front page here, but I am not fond of the effect.

When we were in China, one of our tour bus companions was a wedding photographer.  He said that to be successful at it, you just have to take acceptable photos, but you need people skills.

 

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LOL!  I worked in the library while in high school and spent years doing engineering.  It makes perfect sense to me.  If your wife is still pregnant, your wife could have a sign:  +3 2/3  or +3.666

Chinese families are arranged around birth order.  Everyone relates to everyone else based on their, and their parent’s birth order.  If you are the first born and have several siblings who have children, their children will have different names for you depending upon your sibling’s sex.  If those same children were to refer to your youngest sibling they would have different names again.  By comparison, we just call our parent’s siblings aunt or uncle depending on their sex.  The Chinese seem to be able to keep it straight but for anyone trying to learn, it is a pain.

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I think the link is bad.  Clicking on it, I ended up on my Facebook page, which is scary since there is nothing there!

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It’s amazing how fast a tree can grow a dead branch, or a graffiti covered train car can roll into your photo.  Sometimes garbage cans run into the background too.  I suppose a positive thought would be that the brightness of the branch and sharp shadow means fill flash was used.  Of course that might have been the camera’s idea.

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I’m going to have to set up a test and try out an ISO 160 noise test.

@browneyedgirl89 — Camera shake is more noticeable at longer focal lengths.  This is why very few short lenses have image stabilization and most of the long lenses do.  It is also the reason for the rule of thumb that shutter speed should be at least 1/<focal length>.  That rule does nothing to stop motion blur caused by a moving subject but it does tend to minimize blur caused by moving the camera.   The Canon 70-200 has a stabilizer mode switch to facilitate panning in mode 2.  Probably the Sigma has a similar arrangement.  Make sure the switches are set correctly.  Stabilization should come on when the shutter button is depressed half way for focusing.  You should be able to see the effect through the viewfinder and if you are in a very quiet room you may be able to hear the stabilizer come on.  As one of the other commenters mentioned, I am not a fan of tilted images but leaving that aside, I saw some photos I really liked.  I have a 30D which takes pretty good photos but is only 8 mpx.  I also have a Rebel T2i, which I carry when travelling or when I am just out wandering around.  I find it light and very capable although other models have stronger auto-focus.  It has very good noise control, a 5D Mk III is only about a stop or stop and a half better.  Any model 5 is full frame so you cannot use the EF-S lenses, you have to have EF lenses.  If you are using Sigma lenses, you have to use DG lenses, the DC lenses are only for APS-C sensor (crop) bodies.

 

@mwk24360 — Most people will accept you as being whatever you say you are, if you can say it with a straight face.  Educated customers should be able to discern which photographers are really good and which are clueless.

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