A trip to an abandoned field. Critique please?

anubis404 · Jun 10, 2008

I took these at an abandoned field near where I live with my D40 with kit lens.

The flower was actually at my neighbor's front yard, but I thought it would be nice to include it.

tirediron · Jun 10, 2008

C&C per req:
1. A little bright and in need of straightening (horizon seems to descend toward frame left). The image overall is rather bland however and lacking any main subject. This one would likely be much improved by cropping out a significant part of the empty foreground.
2. Again a little bright, and the moth seems rather soft. With images like this, cropping out unncessary, distracting background is always a good idea.
3. Nicely focused, but at least two stops two bright; part of the flower above the bee seems blown, but this one could be rescued with some creative use of levels.
4. Again, much too bright/over-exposed in the center, but there is enough detail that it could be rescued.
Overall, images with good potential, but an over-riding exposure issue. I suspect it's a matter of becoming more familiar with different metering modes and how your camera 'sees' a given scene. I would also suggest becoming familiar with the Daylight Exposure Rule and comparing your cameras recommended results to it for scenes like these.
Just my $00.02 worth - your milage may vary.
~John

anubis404 · Jun 11, 2008

Thanks for the input. On number 3 I actually used a flash because it was too underexposed, and I had to find a quick solution before the bee flew away.

Heres number 5:

LaFoto · Jun 11, 2008

My thoughts about these is that you may have put your camera on AUTO so you could focus on testing the new lens and its possibilities first, and with many a camera (so I have found out), AUTO somehow means that in fact they overexpose. I don't know why they do it and who it was that thought overexposure was better to be had when in AUTO than correct exposure, but it seems to be a given fact.

Which did lead to the fact that none of these first four photos is correctly exposed, which is what tirediron also said.

Composition of the first is a tad lacking in so far as a) the photo is divided into two equal halves, horizon in the very middle, b) that there is no visible subject, with the abandoned field (which was your subject in your mind, your naming whole thread this tells me so) too bright, too. I think you could have worked some more with that trampled path through the field, making that your "leading line" into the photo, but where you placed yourself when you took the photo, it did not quite work out as one.

The sky being as cloudless as it apparently was, there is little interest there, so you might have wanted to move the camera further down, too, just so you don't crop into the top parts of the trees, and include more of the abandoned field into your frame (which is the contrary to what tirediron is suggesting, but I'm thinking that the field was your intented subject, after all). That might have made your camera expose differently, too, after all (?)

Well, the butterfly photo is all out of focus, no doubt about that.
The bee photo is nice!
A bit of creative cropping may make that one even more interesting, put the bee out of the very centre of the photo, and get us all a bit closer even, which may help with a photo of such a small creature.

Well, the flower is too bright, and too centred for my own liking, but that's me (if it were Alex_B writing this, he'd like it, I think

).

As to the newest one: I don't know what PS filter you used, but while I think I like the photo best of all five, compositionwise, I'm not too fond of that filter...

anubis404 · Jun 11, 2008

Thanks for the advice. I'm actually not shooting in auto mode though. I'm using manual and aperature priority mostly.

I'm just experimenting with what works best. The bee and the butterfly were done in a hurry so it was a quick shot. I didn't want them to fly away. The flower was my own negligence in overexposing it, but I like the shot to much to trash it.

onedayillknowbetter · Jun 12, 2008

Someone once posted on here the way to improve your photographs without buying new equipment is to shoot at sunrise and sunset. From the looks of these, you were out in the field in the middle of the day. I have some comments, I hope you find them helpful.
#1-Time of day!! This would be 1508388 times more appealing if it were taken with the sun behind you, creating more texture on the ground. It's borderline snapshot, in my opinion, but it has the potential for being a really fantastic photo.
#2- I think this is too out of focus and blown out. There is no detail in the wings of the butterfly.
#3 & #4-Pretty much already been said, a little too overexposed. The only thing I would add is don't just add contrast to compensate for the blown out colors, I think that over-contrasty images look unprofessional, and usually just bad. It works sometimes, but especially in this case, you gain no detail where it was lost, and it only adds where there's already color. Consider getting Adobe's lightroom, and shooting in RAW which gives you many more options than jpegs in Photoshop.