Aaarrrgh!!! Why do my photos suck!

[Senor Hound]

Okay, so I'm taking photos of daisies, and I see a butterfly land on some sort of flower. So I go over and take photos of it. I'm so psyched, cause I KNOW the photos are going to be dynamite. Yet, I get them back, look at them on my computer and the ALL SUCK! I don't know what I'm doing wrong! Here's the best I could do, even though the lighting is HARSH!

What I really don't get is that I had my camera down a full step on exposure compensation, and I STILL had to darken it significantly in Photoshop (but it didn't take out the horrendous clipping). And the ones where it did expose it correctly, have a blurry weed RIGHT in the middle of the butterfly. I am so mad at myself I could scream! I know photography is fun, and it is while I'm shooting, but I feel so disappointed when I look at my final results...

Anyway, here's what darkening the -1EV photo and cropping it did... What would you change to make it better? Is it possible to photoshop the shadows off the butterfly? I tried to, but the colors wouldn't sync up.

 

[Battou]

Form the looks of it this Is a film Shot Correct?


For a start check the Exposure slider in the tools of your scanner, It may be off. Even if it's not you can use that to compensate for most cases of over exposure.

after that try Slower Film (if available).

 

[Senor Hound]

Form the looks of it this Is a film Shot Correct?


For a start check the Exposure slider in the tools of your scanner, It may be off. Even if it's not you can use that to compensate for most cases of over exposure.

after that try Slower Film (if available).

Its a Panasonic Lumix Point and shoot with an adjustable lens (a Leica one...ooooh). But its also been cropped quite a bit so that's where some of the grain comes from. But thank you for the compliment! Mimicking film is something I have no idea how to do, but at the same time I try to accomplish. I try not to do any "obviously digital" moves with my photos, so THANK YOU!!! I feel so much better (even if it wasn't a compliment).

 

[Battou]

Its a Panasonic Lumix Point and shoot with an adjustable lens (a Leica one...ooooh). But its also been cropped quite a bit so that's where some of the grain comes from. But thank you for the compliment! Mimicking film is something I have no idea how to do, but at the same time I try to accomplish. I try not to do any "obviously digital" moves with my photos, so THANK YOU!!! I feel so much better (even if it wasn't a compliment).

Ah...That's not a mistake I make very often....


But anywho....I don't know much about the Panasonic Lumix line of cameras, but the queck research I just did yealds nothing about a tendency to drastically over expose of the calibure you are stating.

Show us the EXIF data if you could, There is something amis in the settings, there has to be, it's all I can think of.

*EDIT* and the full shot, I want to see where the camera may have been metering.

 

[Alex_B]

clearly you had some harsh light and a nasty shadow was cast on the butterfly. This is the main problem of this image IMHO.

You could try to repair that shadow with PS, at least weaken it, but I personally would not be good enough to remove it completely

Apart from that, I do like the image, although it is not tack sharp and suffers a bit from being an enlarged crop.