Chillin' With The Aviators

[0okm]

Hey everyone, this is my first post here. I'm new to photography, and have only been doing it for about 3 months now. I usually don't do portraits, and this was a first try at them, and I was just looking for some feed-back. I'm not afraid of harsh words, but if used, please also involve some tips as well

... well, nice to meet you all I guess!

p.s. sorry the image is so large :blushing:

 

[0okm]

Oh, I almost forgot, here is an edited version I made, I don't know if I like it any better though, I'll leave it up to you!

 

[Mygixxer]

you could have at least used a tripod and timer. a self portrait with cell phone would have come out better

 

[cgipson1]

Welcome!

 

[CMfromIL]

I didn't find the picture particularly interesting. It's got more than a little of the "I held the camera at arms length and turned it around at ME!!!!" feel.

You are not a bad looking subject, but the picture and technique leave a lot to be desired. Try a tripod, a timer, and an interesting background and give it another whirl. I'm sure you can do better.

And welcome as well.

 

[LuckySe7en]

I don't like it. There was no thought or effort. All you did was turn the camera around and shot. Portraits take a lot more effort than this. If you don't have a tripod, put the camera on a car or rock or something and use the self timer if you want a self portrait. Also the background is pretty busy. Keep shooting!

 

[mcap1972]

The background looks to busy for me.

 

[0okm]

Uh, this wasn't a self portrait, guys :S If you look in the reflection of the glasses, you can see me taking it. This isn't me, it's a picture of a friend of mine. Thank you for the other tips though about the tri-pod and the busy background.

 

[Mygixxer]

Sweet jeebus...that makes it even worse to know this wasnt a self taken shot. What were you/photographer going for here? Maybe im just missing the objective. Either way, I don't like much anything about it.

 

[OrionsByte]

One of the first things you need to learn about photography is that while your brain is very good at isolating a subject from the background, your camera is not. When you look at something and focus on it, your brain kind of discounts the information around it as less important, but to the camera it's all just light.

Try an experiment to train your eye: set something on a table in the middle of a room and look at it. Look at how the light interacts with it, where the shadows lie, etc. Really study it. You'll notice that while you're studying it, your brain is isolating it from the background, elevating its importance in the scene; the things around it, while you can see them, aren't really being processed as much. So now make the conscious effort to look at the entire scene instead of just the object you're looking at. Suddenly you'll see all kinds of clutter, and you'll probably notice that there's nothing about that object that specifically makes you want to look at it.

So when you're taking a photo, especially a portrait, you have to lead the eye where you want it to go. There are lots of ways of doing that, from lighting and composition to depth-of-field, but the point is that you have to deliberately remove or reduce the value of the elements in the photo that distract from the actual subject of the photo. In this case, the tree and the house are competing for attention even though we know that the subject is the person.

You need to learn to look "in to" the viewfinder instead of "through" the viewfinder.

Keep shooting!

 

[rexbobcat]

Okay...

Composition:
• You are shooting below him. You're getting the "up-the-nose" shot that is unflattering.
• The neck has no reference to a body, so it's weird. Kind of looks like a floating head.
• Shooting vertical subjects it in landscape orientation is usually awkward, and it doesn't help the floating head effect. It also tends to make the vertical object smaller in the frame. Smaller objects are perceived much of the time to be less important if there are many other elements in the frame.
• It's very crooked.
• The background is very busy and it competes with the subject.
• The depth of field is large so that doesn't help with the busy background any.

Other Stuff:
• The edited version does not improve the image. It just distorts the colors and adds a weird texture to the subject's skin.
• I don't really understand the intent with this image.