do i have skill or am i fooling myself

[beamer81]

I just got into photography a little more than a year ago, and have found it to be my passion. however i want to find people other than friends and family to show my pictures to with the hope of getting helpful or at least knowledgeable feedback about my pictures. friends and family almost always say your pictures look nice, but since i have no schooling in photography i want to find people who can offer more than just 'that's a nice picture'. these two are my new challenge of self portraits and a photo i took very early in getting a camera last year. please let me know what you think and help me improve. I figure the more i know the better i might shoot. but thank you for taking the time to help a beginning photographer.
ben

 

[laynea24]

I like the first one. It evokes emotion and that is a very good thing in photography.

 

[MiFleur]

I like the first one too, hands seem to have something special that attract my eyes. As Laynea says, it does carry an emotion.
I do not like the second one, I know the focus is sharp, but I am trying to understand the point. I have a problem with the electrical wires in the background too.
Keep on posting, your images seem to be original and if photography is your passion, you have hours and hours of pleasure ahead of you!

 

[Mike Lamb]

First is great. The fingertips in perfect focus fading into a blur is awesome. Color works.
Second is good but you need to do something with the sky. Try different sky and cloud-scapes. Something that works with that big tire ready to roll over somebody.

 

[unpopular]

There's a certain thing about hands in photography, many people interested in artsy stuff will start doing this handy photographs a lot. hands can be very expressive, but I think that they can be a bit over done, also. It's a unique self portrait, but part of me still wonders if it's "handy". With many of these handy photos, there is a sense of alienation/isolation and desperation to it, reaching out but detached. To me, this sense is a bit overt given the pose and blur, the blur especially makes it almost cliche or trying a bit too hard.

You'll likely hear a lot of praise over this image, but I think that this is a result of an appeal to emotion rather than anything genuine. A successful image should make us think about what we're feeling, and feel about what we're thinking, it's easy to make something that conveys strong emotion, it's another thing entirely to make an image that is an experience in itself.

The second is, well. A snapshot that elevates itself with a tilt. Though very sharp with good exposure in a less than desirable setting, technically well executed, one must ask themselves if it's about the subject, or about how the image was composed. Is it about the tractor, the wheel, the power lines, the interaction between these things - or is it about the tilt itself? If it was straightened out, would it be interesting, or would it be the wheel? What about this caught your attention, what element did you see that made you think it'd be a good photograph? Focus on that.

 

[Mike Lamb]

You'll likely hear a lot of praise over this image, but I think that this is a result of an appeal to emotion rather than anything genuine. A successful image should make us think about what we're feeling, and feel about what we're thinking, it's easy to make something that conveys strong emotion, it's another thing entirely to make an image that is an experience in itself.

This is nonsensical tripe.

Your pictures are very good to excellent. Keep trying new things and shots. Making art requires a thick skin. If you don't have one you will fail.

 

[unpopular]

Oh. Ok. We're going to coddle. In that case, it's awesome. Bug thumbs up. Five stars. Nice colors. Can't do anything wrong, keep up the cliche. Just make sure that you have some emotionally charged content with overtly gimmicky appeal. Does not matter how shallow, so long as it makes people feel something - anything - doesn't much matter!

 

[Rick58]

They're sharp and well exposed, but I don't see much more then that and the camera gets 3/4 of those credits.

 

[NikonO4K]

They don't do anything for me.

 

[SCraig]

This is nonsensical tripe.

Your pictures are very good to excellent. Keep trying new things and shots. Making art requires a thick skin. If you don't have one you will fail.

No, actually it's not nonsensical tripe but truth. The first is a hand and the second a tractor tire. Nothing more, nothing less. The first has been done to death and the second is, well, just a tractor tire.

OP, the exposures are good, the focus is excellent, the rest is uninteresting in my opinion.

 

[amolitor]

Unpopular is pretty much right, except I think with a little too much weight on "making us think" -- I am ok with pure evocation. The first one does evoke, but somewhat weakly. It's a good idea, but it's such a vaguely familiar one that it loses some points. Then, while it evokes, it's not clear what it evokes. It is, I think, a little too open-ended as an idea. I think it could be strengthened by moving the colors and contrast around.

Right now the colors and contrast are "snapshot", neutral renditions of what was there. By increasing or decreasing contrast, you make a statement about your idea. Maybe not a statement that can be expressed in words, but a statement. More contrast is more dramatic, more intense. Less we usually see as less intensity, more ennui or ambivalence. By increasing or decreasing saturation, by shifting colors toward red, magenta, blue, you do similarly.

Think of what you want to express, or what you could express, and think about how you can use these other tools to support that idea. Is this about a deeply affecting loss? B&W, dark, and high contrast might support that emotion, that idea. If it's about the non-caring passivity of depression? Lowered contrast, muted colors, bluer tones might support that idea. And so on. These are not recipes, these are just what pops to my mind to support this idea or that.

No need to get into arguments about who's critique is more valid than anyone else's.

 

[beamer81]

A successful image should make us think about what we're feeling, and feel about what we're thinking, it's easy to make something that conveys strong emotion, it's another thing entirely to make an image that is an experience in itself.

this is the part that worries me the most about my photography. i dont know what im trying to say. most of the pictures i take are because at that moment it evoked a feeling when i saw it. i dont think about them before hand, but i remember that feeling after. however both of these were early attempts. the tractor was about 2 months after i discovered photography. and the self portrait was my first ever try at taking a picture of myself or fully creating an image.

unpopluar is very right in the hand this is way over done in photography. and i have not added anything new to it. but for a first attempt and taking a picture of myself in my apartment i was pleased, but i am looking to different ways to do self portraits.

Right now the colors and contrast are "snapshot", neutral renditions of what was there. By increasing or decreasing contrast, you make a statement about your idea. Maybe not a statement that can be expressed in words, but a statement. More contrast is more dramatic, more intense. Less we usually see as less intensity, more ennui or ambivalence. By increasing or decreasing saturation, by shifting colors toward red, magenta, blue, you do similarly.

i have played with the color and contrast before, but not with the thought that it help expresses my idea, i am excited to consider this when i edit my photos. right now i have been trying to approach my photos in a more natural way. let the image have the focus and the colors just as support. but it is defiantly something that i will bear in mind.

everyone else, i thank you for the honest feedback. i am glad to know there are people out there who do not care for my photos. you need that to keep from getting a big head about the 'i can never take a bad photo' sense friends and family can create.

 

[dmunsie]

"do I have skill or am I fooling myself"

As a noob photog myself I can relate to that question deeply. I'm guessing alot of noob photogs take a few photos, see they're coming out nice due to auto+ working well. Spend some time and take a few "serious" shots and come to the conclusion.."omg!! I'm GREAT!!!". I myself am currently going through this to be honest. Luckily...it's starting to calm down a bit as my overall knowledge of photography grows. So to answer your question..yes you have some basic camera skills. Learning how to focus, change framing a bit, etc. If you did this all in "manual" camera mode that would be even more impressive from a technical point of view. Are you fooling yourself thinking your composition is great or original? Probably so, but don't let that stop you from moving forward. The old saying... "one man's garbage is another man's treasure" is very relevant when it comes to photography. Like so many others have said...just keep shooting.

 

[Derrel]

"do I have skill or am I fooling myself"

WELL, that question cannot be answered by us after we have seen two pictures...it's like asking if a novel is well-done after having read a mere two pages of it...we just do not have enough to go on...

 

[amolitor]

There are definitely degrees of fooling with color and contrast, but you can get away with a LOT before it starts looking "unreal". You can absolutely retain a naturalistic look while still pushing the contrast and color around to reinforce mood and ideas. I recommend that you find some photographs that you like, maybe just some fashion shots in a magazine, or a book of photographs by some photographer you respect, or whatever. Ideally, photographs that you're looking at and NOT seeing any processing, photographs that you are accepting as basically "realistic"

Now look at them more closely, and look at the world around you. Go back and forth and try to pick up on technical elements that are actually unreal in the image. Usually a successful photograph looks very much UNlike reality, once you starting picking it apart. Our visual mind will accept a surprising amount of stuff as "real" looking, while still picking up on cues and hints that are very much un-real.

The easiest example is black and white landscapes. We tend to accept them as realistic looking -- but they don't even have colors