a couple pictures of my snake (56K)

primus diddy · Sep 13, 2005

Hey guys, I'm a pretty amature photographer but I'm looking to get better. Here are a couple pictures of my snake.

I ran into some difficulties, so I'm only posting one for now.

LittleMan · Sep 13, 2005

Welcome to the forum!
It looks like she's about to shed.

It's a nice picture, but around here we like to keep the images around 600-700 pixels wide/tall at most.

-chris

primus diddy · Sep 13, 2005

Yeah, I tried to resize it, but it didn't work. Sorry about that.

He was indeed in shed. I assume you keep snakes; what kind(s)?

manaheim · Sep 13, 2005

Hey, I hope you don't mind... I was a bit bored and I played with the image. All I really did here was sharpen it a bit using unsharp mask (70%, 2.5 radius, 2 threshold) and turn up the contrast about 35 points. (this is in photoshop)

It's a neat pic, but you have that ugly spectre of the background being washed out due to the very bright light and the subject being effectively in front of that light.

Also one very minor point is that your depth of field is pretty narrow and it looks like the back of his jaw was the focal point, tossing the nose and eye a bit out of focus. If possible, a smaller aperature and/or further distance from subject and using a zoom lens might have helped that a bit.

Oh and what the heck is that snake doing in the playground?!?

:lmao:

Anyway, here's my quick try at it:

primus diddy · Sep 14, 2005

Sorry I got back to this so late, but I'm a complete newbie. I know most of the vocab and stuff, but I don't really know what you were talking about (lol).

How would I fix these problems in the future? I took it using a Nikon Coolpix 5000. I can't see the display outside, so I just kind of shoot and hope it comes out.

manaheim · Sep 14, 2005

primus diddy said:
Sorry I got back to this so late, but I'm a complete newbie. I know most of the vocab and stuff, but I don't really know what you were talking about (lol).

How would I fix these problems in the future? I took it using a Nikon Coolpix 5000. I can't see the display outside, so I just kind of shoot and hope it comes out.

hehehe, ok no worries... which parts threw you? depth of field? sharpening? contrast?

primus diddy · Sep 15, 2005

How would I go about taking a better picture next time? That's the jist of it.

I understand the problems now that I read it again. I just don't know how to solve them.

manaheim · Sep 16, 2005

Well, honeslty, I think the picture itself is essentially fine except maybe where you focused and/or your depth of field. If you increase your depth of field by changing the F/stop (aperature) to a smaller number, your depth of field will increase, bringing more objects into focus both in front and in back of your focus point.

The only other problem (and a very common one) is bright light behind your subject which tosses the picture out of whack and sometimes leads to underexposing your actual subject. This didn't really happen too much with you, but when you adjust the picture to bring your subject more into an appropriate exposure, it does "wash out" the background and make the light somewhat harsh beyond those wood planks, which is just a bit distracting.

The real trick is in your processing... pretty much ALL digital images need to be sharpened, and for that I'd use photoshop and look around for a good tutorial on the web on the unsharp mask filter. It's excellent (and is what I used for your pic). Also, for my money, 90% of pictures I see need deeper contrast... lighter lights, darker darks. Again, use photoshop (or any tool really) and play with the contrast until it gives your image real punch without losing too much detail in the extreme dark and light portions of your picture.

the most likely third thing you'll have to play with is your color balance... again, photoshop.

This is another thing to go online and search for good tutorials.

To find the tutorials, literally go to google.com and search on "xxxx tutorial" where xxxx is your subject of choice. You'll find a lot.

Hope this helps!