First attempts at sunsets

[jcdeboever]

You guys are flipping awesome! You guys just dial it in for me and it helps me by leaps and bounds. Thank you very much! Jim (Derrel too), I really appreciated y'all spending the time to direct me. In my world, you guys simplify all the stuff I am reading.

 

[Jim Walczak]

You guys are flipping awesome! You guys just dial it in for me and it helps me by leaps and bounds. Thank you very much! Jim (Derrel too), I really appreciated y'all spending the time to direct me. In my world, you guys simplify all the stuff I am reading.

First and foremost, you are quite welcome and I'm glad you found my comments helpful. Since you say you're reading up, something I found very helpful when I started taking photography more seriously was to read a few books on both traditional art (as in painting and drawing) as well as a couple of intro books to graphics design. I'll admit that yea, I'm a huge da Vinci nut to begin with, however I found that studying the work of the "great masters" helped my understanding of composition tremendously. If anything, I think many traditional painters put a lot more thought into composition than the average photographer does. As a digital artist, I also have a fascination with the hyper-realists...which I also found helpful as a photographer. Consider Ralph Goings for example...while the quality of his work is quite amazing (sometimes it's hard to remember his work are paintings!), his compositions are often of rather simple items, yet very effective. Even when it comes to art styles that I don't really care for personally, such as the impressionists, I was able to learn a great deal. Monet for example did a number of pieces where he painted the same scene repeatedly, usually during different seasons...his series of Haystacks or the Rouen Cathedral for example. It gave me an interesting inside into the use of color and light as they pertain to composition.

Likewise, most intro text books on graphics design go into concepts such as color theory and patterns and such in ways that most photography books only seem to skim over...all of which can be helpful to a photographer. Many photography books will often talk about the use of leading lines and geometric shapes, etc., however without a practical understanding of what it all means, it's hard to apply it to your own photography work.

Anyways, again I'm glad you found my comments useful! Good luck with your work!