Photos Return to photography: Seattle

I recently decided to get back into photography after a long break with no decent camera, and I picked up a D60 this past week. The kit lens seems decent so far, and the VR is nice but I really like macro and plant photography so I picked up one of these: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=158093 for $100 from amazon (should be here Friday ).

I just moved to Seattle for 6 months, and went to this park near my apartment on Sunday to see if I could get some good practice. I don't remember almost any of the technical details I used to know so lots of the photos I took didn't quite come out the way I wanted. I was happy with a few of them shown below though. I was trying to stay away from auto-exposure as it almost invariably doesn't do what I want.

1: Probably should've used a smaller aperture for this one. Too much detail got cut out. It looks better at full resolution though.


2: Someone before me had clearly stacked these rocks by the shore. Unfortunately the boat was in the shot and I didn't notice until later.


3: These two birds allowed me to get within 4ft. of them without flying away so I took the opportunity to get plenty of shots. Unfortunately it was very cloudy and most were blurred a bit.


4


5


More at my flickr for the curious...

I'm kinda just putting them out there, but any comments/critiques would be much appreciated.

*side note* I noticed that someone in the above thread mentioned they used a macro extension tube with the lens to get nice closeup shots. Is this actually required or is it just a nice-to-have bonus?

 

Its a beginning. Need to learn the rule of thirds, it'll help you compose better (one of my biggest problems too, so dont get frustrated). The first one has to much DOF going on. It just looks like a red bar with out of focus blobs to the left and right of it, also no subject so your attention isnt drawn to anything.

Then the bird ones need more surroundings. Dont be afraid to pull in tight like you do, then pull out and throw the rule in, it'll make your shots so much better.

Keep on practicing, like grandma always said "Practice makes perfect".

And oh, I always always stress this, shoot to your liking, not everyone is going to like/appreciate your work more then you (or critique it as much for that matter either). So take any and all CC with a grain of salt.

 

As outlawaol states, it's a start His note on the Rule of Thirds is an important one that you should take to heart - you'd see an instant step forward in your images. As a side note, when you're composing for that, remember that with live subjects, you want their heads facing INTO the frame. So your bird with its wings spread (last shot) would be centered to the right third of the image, so he's facing into the more empty area of the frame.

Hope it gets the ball rolling. As for technical critique on exposure and such, each image is a bit under-exposed for my tastes and on a cloudy, rainy day you have to do a little more to bump that up. Often times, in-camera metering here is imperfect and will leave you about 1/3 to 1/2 EV under exposed. Don't be afraid to shoot a little over as compared to a little under! You can always back it down in photoshop (if you're shooting RAW, and you should be!) but more color data is preserved by the camera at the bright end than the shadows.

 

Thanks for the comments, especially the tips on composition. I think the exposures might be off because I adjusted them on my laptop (my PC was still in the mail to me). They all looked overexposed when I imported them from the camera so I lowered the exposure a bit on almost all of them. In retrospect it was probably my laptop's monitor and not the photos themselves.