Hi guys, looking a some of your work is impressive but also inspiring. Have taken some of my own and would be great to get some C&C. http://www.flickriver.com/photos/41630592@N05/ Thanks, PBear23
I love the colours you've got but I think with the two pictures of the full sunflower, you should try and get the full flower into frame. I don't like the way some of the petals are cut off.
You've found a great subject for those shots. #1 Red Half is well exposed but the BG doesn't add to the shot. A different color that gave either more punch to the whole thing or perhaps some simple color contrast would be better. Calling it Red Half I expect to only see half of something... I'm not. I also think you composition would have been stronger had you only kept little more than half in the frame and not cropped the petals so the shape could be nicely rounded of by them. #2 Full is a bit overexposed. Also it seems like there's too harsh contrast or color boost. The dark green leaf in the lower right and the light green leaf left of the flower both detract from the composition. #3 yellow half I think you should have either gone closer or wider so to either exclude all background or compose with the background in mind. #4 sunflower small. I actually think this compositionally is the strongest of the four. Your depth-of-field in the shot gives us a beautiful foreground, a slightly blurred middle ground that adds depth as well as further information about what we are seeing and a backrgound that is very simple and gives a color surface for the middle and foreground. You could up the contrast a bit on this though. Not to much but a little would lift it. All in all you're on to something and I think with a little practice in compositioning you'll get far. Thanks for sharing
in general you did a good work some critique: #1. the worst of the 4. looks like you used direct flash or it was shot under very strong sunlight. my bet is on the flash though. very contrasty, blown out, flat image with very unnatural look #2. overall it's good. i would crop some of the space on the left and maybe underexpose for about half a stop. maybe close the aperture a few stops down too #3. kinda like #1 but i like the crop better. much more intimate and appealing to the eye. colors still look a little bit flat #4. best of the bunch. great natural light, nicely composed, good bokeh. my only critique would be about the background which is a bit messy. but from what i see some cleaning can be done in PP
Thank you all for the critique, will take it all in mind for my next session. I haven't done any cropping of the photos, they were direct RAW photos into CS4 so that i could save them as smaller JPEG's for online. Need to have a go at adjusting the colour/contrast on a few too. The fourth one doesn't look like that on my Camera LCD or in picassa, think something happened with the inital conversion to JPEG. Just like to say thank you for your time, hoping to get into this some more and all comments are gratefully taken on board.
Without this sounding like a stupid question, could someone explain ISO to me and how it is appropriately used? Thanks in advance guys
ISO stands for International Standards Organization. In terms of photography, it refers to ISO 5800:1987, the standard that replaced AFA and DIN to refer to the sensitivity of the film plane. It works like everything else in photography, every full stop is double from the last one. In terms of real life digital usage, ISO 100 is considered the base. ISO 50 would be half as sensitive to light, while ISO 200 is twice as sensitive. The sensitivity of the film plane is one part of the 3 things that determine your exposure value. S+A+ISO=EV, to make it very basic. So for every EV, to gain or lose a stop in either shutter speed or aperture, you can raise or lower the ISO while keeping the 3rd variable stable. Ex: you need to keep your shutter speed at 1/80th, say to keep people sharp and your light is failing - but you also need to keep your aperture at f/5.6 to keep the flash from over exposing yet your meter is showing your under exposing by a stop; you can raise your ISO from 100 to 200 to keep the exposure where you want it. If you aren't really comfortable with the 3 variables and how they interact with one another, I recomend running out and grabbing a basic photography book ASAP. You will just be confounded by what you camera is doing and get frustrated when it won't do what you want it to. Edit: also, there is a corresponding loss of detail, color and contrast as you ramp up the ISO (called 'grain' in film, and 'noise' in digital). In film it was manageable and, in some cases, artistic. In early digital, actually up until about a year ago, it was just plain ugly if not handled well. With the last generation of sensors, the performance at higher ISOs has really be quite phenomenal. Over ISO 800, some sensors look better then anything we had in film (well, to some, anyway). If you really want to nerd out
That just made a lot of sense and was exactly what I was after. I have through doing, worked with aperture and obviously shutter speeds ( working on some night shots of the motorway and some night time rugby) but hadn't adjusted the ISO at all. Have grasped the concept of using the ISO settings, so will now explore it in practice. Thanks for your help, much appreciated.
