First shots

TodaysPhoto · Nov 10, 2009

Especially love the last one. The little fellow appears to have a smart-aleck smirk on his face. Great shots.

PhotoXopher · Nov 10, 2009

1. Seems out of focus to me.
2. Much better

3. Crooked, other than that I like the wavy landscape!
4. Polly looks all kinds of happy, nice capture.

bigtwinky · Nov 10, 2009

Watch those horizon lines and make sure to keep them straight!
While some photos work well with a tilted horizon, landscapes and cityscapes usually do not.

Great sky on the cityscape though.

As for the flowers, I don't care for them too much. They are mainly out of focus and I don't like the composition. Make sure you aren't too close to the subject with your camera. All lenses have a minimum focusing distance. If you are closer, it won't focus. This should be writting on the lens itself.

Read up on composition techniques, rule of thirds, leading lines...

The bird picture is cute. Love the colours and you did a better job on the focus. Composition could probably be helped with less centering of the subject.

I hope you enjoyed Montreal, its a great city! I hope you had a chance to go to the top of Mount Royal and take in the views there. The main lookout has a great view at night.

gian133 · Nov 10, 2009

yeah make sure everything is straight. angled shots rarely work imo.

i think 2 would be better if you showed more of the flower. cant really tell what your looking at.

and i like the city pic. just straighten it

good work

bigtwinky · Nov 10, 2009

gian133 said:
yeah make sure everything is straight. angled shots rarely work imo.

I disagree... angling the camera can greatly help an image. Its very image dependant, but giving the impression that always having your camera at a straight angle is the best way to go is wrong.

Depends on where the lines lead, a person's gaze, where a road is going, etc etc.

Its a compositional tool that should be used like all other tools... in the right situation. Off the top of my head, 20% of my shots have a tilted camera.

gian133 · Nov 10, 2009

Not to start an arguement here. but could you (bigt) possibly show some examples of what you mean with the angles.

and i did say rarely. out of all your pictures how many are angled?

im a beginner myself so excuse my lack of knowledge lol.

thank you

bigtwinky · Nov 10, 2009

gian133 said:
Not to start an arguement here. but could you (bigt) possibly show some examples of what you mean with the angles.

and i did say rarely. out of all your pictures how many are angled?

im a beginner myself so excuse my lack of knowledge lol.

thank you

The point of this forum is to discuss things, and while discussing artistic things, it can often be more subjective, its all open for discussion in my book.
Keep in mind though that my comment was about shots rarely working with angles... ie - camera tilt.

I dont want to hijack the OPs thread, but for the purpose of angle discussion, I feel that tilting the camera to show a bigger sense of movement and action usually works, again, photo depending. The amount of camera tilt can vary, but as I said in my earlier post, I would think that 20% of my images have some camera tilt in it.

I had taken some of this scene with no tilt, but the tilted version has a much greater effect

Camera was also slightly tilted here, again because a straight on 90 degree shot would not of given the branch and leaves a nice diagonal

Not an amazing photo, but again, some slight camera tilt helps lead the eye (all in my opinion)

These bikes on a stand are straight, but a tilt worked better for this shot

However, here is the same bike stand where a tilt did not work

I hope this helps clear up my point how camera tilt is not "rarely" used, but more a tool to be used when most effective, which in my case is 20% of my images, and will probably be more than that as I'm just getting used to proper tilt.

And this is just urban / cityscape. Camera tilting to get required angles is used in portraits as well.

The way I see it and have been told is that diagonal lines are very important in photography and are visually more appealing than straight lines (in most cases). As its not always possible to physically turn a road, a branch or a bike stand to a diagonal line, this is often achieved by the photographer changing and shifting positions, which may or may not include tilting the camera.

I hope this helps and adds to the discussion. Sorry again to the OP for a thread hijack, but I felt that it would be better to answer the question directly in the thread instead of a PM, as others may have had the same thinking.

bigtwinky · Nov 10, 2009

peekay said:
Hey,

Thanx for the feedback.
This is a straightened version of the cityscape.

Now for the first flower, what i was trying to do was to keep all the flower levels focused, while keeping the background blurred. I just can't seem to get this working correctly. If i use a lower aperture, the background becomes clear instead of blurry. What's the workaround in such cases?

See this one below for example, the flower levels that are behind are a bit blurred. How can I focus the whole object at all levels, and keep the background blurred in such cases?

Nice job on the cityscape, looks much better straightened like that!

As for the flower, the blurry background and focused foreground is called depth of field (DOF). The main components of DOF are using a wide aperture (f1.8, 2.8,..), getting good relative distance between the focused subject and the background, and using a longer focal lenght.

DOF can also happen on parts of the photo that are in front of the image. People who do marcro work know DOF and its challenges very well. Picture a photo of an insect where the head is sharp but the body in back and branch in front is blurry. You need alot of precision, timing and patience (and alot of adjustments, specially when you are new) to get this right.

Shooting a portrait with an f/1.4 aperture can be a challenge as you can end up with the nose sharp and the eyes blurry. If you want more of the person's face to be sharp, then you need to up the aperture to say f/2.8 or even f/5.6. Whatever works depending on the scene.

Looking at your new reference flower picture, I'm thinking the photographer adjusted their aperture / focal lenght to get more in focus. In doing such close up work, photographers usually use a tripod as again, a little shift in your body position when hand holding may throw things off.

gian133 · Nov 10, 2009

Thank you bigtwinky. and sorry i must have missed that you said 20% in your origional post.

And yeah. that cityscape looks awsome. I love the water on the right.

Great shots

FLASHPOINT* · Nov 10, 2009

Nice shots there especially 3 and 4.

ANDS! · Nov 10, 2009

That HDR shot has the dread "contrast halo" - look how the buildings almost seem to have a neon "glow" to them. What software are you using?

bigtwinky · Nov 10, 2009

peekay said:
... I loved the highway picture you posted, could you upload it in higher resolution?

as requested

ANDS! · Nov 10, 2009

It's not misconfiguration - its finding the right combo for the most pleasing effect. Sadly there is no standard. I use Dynamic Photo HDR. I tried Photomatix's new build of their program, and wasn't too impressed. Here are my HDR's; you can see the contrast-halo's are there, but not to the same level. You'll always get those halo's (thats just the nature of the best), but its all a matter of controlling it to a pleasing level.