Cold Steel 2

[DramaDork626]

This was taken with my digital camera, Olympus, 3.2 megapixel. AF Zoom 5.8-17.4mm lens. It obviously isnt done with film. I Fixed it up in Gimp the image size is 530 x 439. I messed with the color balance a bit cuz I was going for a certain hue. And I faded the edges. This was taken in my room, the lighting in here isnt that great so its kinda hard to get a good shot. I wanted a good shot of my fetish collar cuz the look of shiny metal in photography is just awsome to me. The intention is to have the appreciation and visual pleasure I get when looking at objects like this. I want a critique on this because I am doing the best I can with the resources I have, and some of the resources are new to me and I want to exel in this field very much. So if anyone has helpful suggestions or techiniques i can use, I would appreciate it very much.
(note: the flash on my camera is very bright and it cannot be fixed, so i know the lighting is a little funny)

 

[luckydog]

a simple and extremely cheap way of turning down your flash brightness is to place tissue paper in front of it. Just filters out some of the light Use more or less paper as required.

 

[DramaDork626]

hehe, cool, I'll try that

 

[elsapo]

Re: Flash - depending on how it's working, your flash may just keep putting out light until it gets the exposure it works. If that's the case, the tissue paper wont really work. I dunno about your camera/flash, however.

As for the image, I'd shoot it w/o flash. I hate flash, personally - light, even when there isn't much of it, usually has qualities you want to capture.

I'd also try a tighter crop on the metal, to focus things a bit. Bring down the tones on the dead areas to try and make it a little more specific.