DEATH wrote:Fourth from the end was intentionally done that way, I was going for a burned-out effect.
The seventh (With the sand) was my fuckup, I didn't have the technical ability to focus on the sand, managing the aperture and to get a meter of the sky...
For the fourth, I would almost say give this one a lot of thought before you go and try it again. I don't know quite what you're getting at by "burned-out" (charred?), but silhouetting as an artistic choice is basically a way to show off a shape while excluding other things. So when silhouetting, you'll want to have a sense of purpose as to what you want to show and how you're going to go about showing it. And it's usually a good idea to either avoid a blot of glare like you've got there, or work it into the composition somehow.
In the case of the seventh, where you're shooting somewhat into the sun (lens flare, lol), probably your best bet would have been a more downward angle, to try to keep the glare out of the lens. Either that, or going back to shoot at a time of day when the light was better. The couple of hours right after dawn and right before sunset are good, because not only is the light at an oblique angle, but it is redder and brings out colors and textures better. Midmorning-midafternoon, you have to compensate for the light being direct and harsh.
There's a platform I sometimes go to to shoot the trains that go by, and the problem is that the track is shrouded by office blocks, so it's really not possible to meter for the scene and the sky at the same time. I end up composition-cropping out as much of the sky as possible to avoid blowing it.
Indeed? Interestingf advice, I usually don't take many close-up shots due to being terrible at pictures of humans, or portrait/close-up shots (I prefer objects, in photography as life ). Still, Macro shots of flowers, insects are what you mean by this, right? Anything else that could prove good practice?
This has to do more with the artistic side of photography rather than the technical. In addition to looking at objects in their whole - trees, buildings, trains, whatever - look for parts of those objects that show off color, or form, or texture, and practice composing and shooting "in the small" and maybe in a more abstract way. I don't really know how to put it well.
It's not really the case that that's the key to artistic photography or anything - Ansel Adams, or my O. Winston Link rail photography calendar disprove that - but when you're learning photography, you can only benefit by looking at ordinary things in as many different ways as possible. I'm trying to pick this up as well.
You mean keeping one bit in the image sharp, and making everything else blurry, right.
Right. You can play around with DoF if you shoot in full manual or aperture priority modes - low f-stop numbers give you low depth of field, and vice versa. The lower your depth of field, the narrower the 'slice' of your image that will be in focus at any given distance.
If you mean how long have I been shooting, then for about 1.5-2 years. I spent a year out of that withiut touching a DSLR while I was in the middle of the desert (My dad refused to let me take his SLR there, so I used my 18th B-day present - my first camera/a compact). I'm self taught. How long have you been at it?
I took crappy pictures with a series of crappy cameras for about ten years. Then my grandfather gave me a couple of SLRs and lenses that he wasn't using, and with those I've been taking what I like to think are mediocre pictures for about a year now, and every so often I take one that's actually half-decent. I picked up a digicam for snapshots, and I've got a Brownie and a Rollei TLR that I'd like to try out once they get worked over. I'm also teaching myself how this all works.
I appreciate it, and anything else you could advise me on.
Well, as I come across stuff you post here, I'll comment if I have the time.
Meanwhile, if you want to do yourself a big favor, go to your local bookstore or library and flip through photobooks in your down time. A good way to get inspiration and see how you might look for and at your subjects is to see how other people did it. It's probably the best (certainly the cheapest!) way to get exposure to the less technical aspects of photography.
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. I appreciate it, and anything else you could advise me on.