Hi Dave,
DJK wrote:To be honest, I was expecting a lot more criticism, guess you’re always your own worst judge.
Hopefully, yes.
But here we also believe that we should be trying to help you. Simply saying "that picture sucks" helps nobody. If we can offer positive suggestions ("can you try to crop it this way" or "maybe this might work in B&W") we hope that you can be encouraged to see different ways to bring out the best in what you've done.
Please don't be discouraged if, sometimes, there are few or no comments against a post. This means that your image is brilliant.
Or perhaps that it sucks so badly that it's beyond redemption.
Or perhaps that it's merely difficult to offer honest, objective suggestions on.
Bottom line is to listen to what's said, but always understand that the images are your images, and it's always up to you to accept or reject the suggestions made. Nobody here will get their nose out of joint if you reject their suggestions.
And also keep in mind that it's the images we're critiquing, not you.
Thanks for your suggestions Gary. I posted the camera produced JPEGs as I am still a little intimidated by post.
"Hi, I'm Gary, and I'm a postaholic .... "Post can be very intimidating. I don't like doing it much at all (hell, I spend my days in front of computers, and post is just more of the same) and there's no shame in admitting this.
Losing what you perceive as the reality is an important thing to be mindful of. You need to keep in mind the fact that there is no camera available that comes close to matching the capabilities that our eyes and brain hold, and any image that we produce can only be a subset of our recollection of the reality.
With that in mind, always aim to satisfy yourself with your outcomes. My opinions (and those of others) are exactly that - opinions. We would like to help, but ultimately the images are yours, and it's whatever that you like from the images that is important here. There are many different ways that you can alter your images in post, and that takes time to both learn, as well as perform.
But the best way to learn is to be shooting. Shoot this, and that. Experiment, play. Try something that you think may be new. It'll be new to you, for sure. But don't be afraid: your camera is just a tool.
I prefer this version. I would have probably taken the crop a little further, but, as I've said, it's your image.
The one other thing that the crop has highlighted to me is that the horizon is not straight. Look at the far back of the river/lake. You mention that you would like to do some things in camera, and I heartily concur. I'm of the view that we should try to get the image right in the camera. I fail dismally, and have a ton of fun failing.
But to get to the point, one thing I often mention to people is the fact that we need to take a moment before shooting, and cast our eye around the viewfinder to see if everything is as we want it: is there a tree going out of the bride's head? Is there a kid on a tricycle in the background when you're trying to shoot a romantic image of a couple? Or is the horizon straight?
I initially cropped closer to the right tree, but ended up with the arching branch of the left tree cutting the top edge which to me didn't look right.
And that is absolutely, and correctly, the judgment call that you make. We suggest, you try the suggestion, and
modify, accept or reject as you feel appropriate.
One of the things I’m a bit curious about is how to me the last picture seems to have some noise (especially when trying to make out the woman’s features). I’d expect this for low light, high ISO pictures, but this was in the sun at ISO100.
Ok, I'll start by saying that you've done nothing "wrong" at all, and your assertions here are, by and large, correct.
But let's go back a couple of steps, and try to understand a little of the technology in use here.
First of all, what metering
mode were you using? I don't think your camera offers a spot metering
mode, and most likely, you were using the default averaging
mode, which tries to assess the whole scene and deal with it as an homogenous, non-complex scene that will resolve to grey.
That works perfectly well as long as your scene does in fact resolve to an average grey.
In this image (pretty much any time you go out into bright sunlight) that is not going to be the case, and you may find that you have come across a scene with a high range of light values within the image.There's the very brightly lit background - the roadway, and the trees, for instance. The lady who is the subject of the image is, however, in shade. I'm only guessing, but I'd say there's a three or four stop variation between those two parts of the image, and this this is a very difficult scene to get right.
You either expose for the sunlit areas, or expose for the shadowed areas ... or try to average it and get nothing exactly right (but still get something very usable) ...
Or you do things like adding light into the shadowed areas. Fill flash, reflectors, etc are all useful tools, advanced techniques ... and probably totally impractical given that you're on a holiday and wanting to enjoy yourself with your family.
g.
Gary Stark
Nikon, Canon, Bronica .... stuff
The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it - US Pres. Bartlet
