1st camera; 1st shots; C&C please, thanks

maulrat · Jul 29, 2008

Hello all. These are the first few pictures that I took yesterday with my first DSLR. I have never really cared much for photography until my decision to purchase a real camera. Please let me know what I can to do to improve my photos as well as hints on post processing. I didnt have much time but I took these in raw then opened them in PS CS2 to slightly edit them. Thanks in advance for your help.

Resized raw to jpg

Slightly edited raw w/ photoshop cs2 then resized and converted to jpg

KhronoS · Jul 29, 2008

The photos are quite nice. Great job taking them and editing them

tirediron · Jul 29, 2008

Congrats on the new purchase!

c&c per req:

1. A nice pose, slightly under-exposed, but with a distracting background. The selective focus is good in that it helps to soften and lessen the distraction, but doesn't go quite far enough.

2. Good composition, nicce expression, but the subject is at least one full stop under-exposed. Note the bright sunlight behind the subject which as "fooled" your meter. In a case like this, you can either spot meter the subject to get an accurate exposure (in which case you'll have a blown background) or move to a different location.

3. Good exposure, however note the cropping: You've bisected her left arm longitudally, and cut off her fingers at the last knuckle. It's okay to crop limbs, but as a rule, never at or near a joint (tends to look like amputation) and never along their axis. Also the white balance in this seems a trifel cold.

The post work is good and improves all of the images, but the skin tones in #2/5 are still a little darker than they should be.

Just my $00.02 worth - your milage may vary.

~John

maulrat · Jul 30, 2008

tirediron said:
3. Good exposure, however note the cropping: You've bisected her left arm longitudally...

Thanks for your input, Tirediron. Thanks for pointing this out. I hate to crop pictures. In this picture, I actually didn't crop the picture at all. My idea was to try to get a lot of my subject in the shot but still keep the stairs and hall for artistic value. In doing so, I accidently dissected my subject and I didn't even notice. Since my lens doesn't zoom, I should have taken a couple of steps back to fit in the arm of my subject while keeping the stairs in the background. =)