Re: Moving from snapshots to photographs


Bill Funk wrote:
On Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:51:27 -0800, "Barry L. Wallis"
<KRQSAOQMNTXB@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

My wife and I are trying to move from taking snapshots to taking
photographs. Here are two of the best shots from our recent trip to
Venice, California.

http://members.cox.net/no.spam.please/duck.jpg (2614x2448, 657KB)
http://members.cox.net/no.spam.please/flamingo.jpg (3264x2448, 1MB)

Constructive comments would be appreciated.

A good start!
The duck is blurred, from camera movement; a faster shutter speed
would have helped a lot here. While normally 1/60 second would work
well, it obviously didn't here. Also, the foliage in the front
distracts.

I noticed that the feathers on the duck's back looked sharp but his
head had a slight blur. I chalked this up to depth of field and
slightly off focus. If you are correct (and I have no reason to doubt
it), I faster shutter speed and larger aperture would have fixed this
at the expense of making the focus more critical. Correct?

The flamingo is well composed IMO, but I would have put it (the red
flamingo) in the upper right third. Personal preference only! The
purple 'thing' in the background is very distracting.

Yes, I included this because I liked my wife's composition. Not sure
how I could have gotten rid of the purple umbrella other than
Photoshopping it out (which would probably result in a mess). Maybe I
could try desaturating it a bit so it doesn't jump out as much.

Overall, nice pics that show good promise.

Thanks.

Is there a setting that will get you larger image files? Not image
size, you're showing the full 7MP, I mean less compression. The
flamingo shows compression artifacts that would be lessened with less
compression/larger file size.

Yes, the compression is a function of the limited space I have to use
from my ISP. Could you point me to the artifiacts? When I looked at the
compressed photo, it didn't look very different from the original. In
any case, when I repost the picture, I will use less compression.

Take LOTS of photos, and weed out the non-keepers, if you're not
already doing that. Study them,and see what it is that makes the good
ones good; composition, lighting, things like that. Learn from what
you do.

That is exactly what we do. For example, on this trip I took 3 - 5
photos of some scenes at different exposures. Whe we were picking the
keepers my wife noticed that although the scene looked very similar in
each, some exposures showed the clouds much more clearly (the
highlights were closer to being blown out).

I appreciate everyone's comments and will continue to post samples of
what I think are the best ones to see if I can get some tips on
improving them. I have noticed that for a high-traffic newsgroup, the
signal-to-noise ratio is rather high. :-)


But don't let the camera overwhelm the vacation!

Never. We specifically strolled through Venice to relax, enjoy and take
pictures.

- Barry

.

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