First outing! C&C please!

RxForB3 · Feb 10, 2012

I took my first outing with my camera. I'm very much a beginner, and this was my first real attempt at photography. I love night photography and tried to follow Manaheim's tutorial (thanks, by the way!). It helped me get a good start, but I'd love suggestions, especially on the pics with the stuffed gecko. He's my son's favorite stuffed animal, so I'm doing a "roaming gnome" type thing with him.

1.

Seattle Night Sky by RxForB3, on Flickr

2.

Seattle Night Life by RxForB3, on Flickr

3.

Needle in a Haystack by RxForB3, on Flickr

4.

Seattle Nights by RxForB3, on Flickr

5.

Seattle's Center by RxForB3, on Flickr

6.

Under the Needle by RxForB3, on Flickr

7.

Geicki the Geicko Gecko by RxForB3, on Flickr

8.

Geicki in Seattle by RxForB3, on Flickr

9.

Pensive Gecko by RxForB3, on Flickr

Sorry if that's too many pictures to start with. Also, is it preferred to post smaller pictures on this forum?

Some of my issues are the blue lens flares in pictures 1 and 4. Would a lens hood have prevented that? If not, what could I have done? How could I have gotten the space needle in better focus in picture 8? The aperture was at 22, which was as high as it would go, I believe. If I recall correctly, I was using the canon 50mm f/1.8 lens, so maybe that's just a limitation of that lens? Which would you consider more "artistic," number 7 or 8? Number 6 was unfortunately taken without a tripod (too much of a hassle to carry with me that late at night). Any suggestions, comments, questions?

Thanks!!

Trever1t · Feb 10, 2012

you did good :thumbup: Decent exposures, interesting city scapes and the traveling lizard mad eme chuckle.

dxqcanada · Feb 10, 2012

A lens hood will prevent light from hitting the lens that is outside the field of view ... the lens flare that you are getting is from the spot lights in the field of view. The light is bouncing off the lens elements. The only way to prevent that is by better lens coatings ... but I do not know of any lens that has 100% eliminated internal flare.

APHPHOTO · Feb 10, 2012

Like the pics except for those three bright lights. Distracting.

Josh220 · Feb 10, 2012

Cool pics, I wish I had more time in Seattle to get some angles like this. I went to the top of the space needle but we didn't have time to go to any of the surrounding parks or hills. You can see mine in my Flickr (in my signature).

I prefer #2 because it doesn't have the distracting lights.

Bossy · Feb 10, 2012

Love the gecko

We have a traveling Monkey

RxForB3 · Feb 10, 2012

Thanks for all the compliments and comments! I wish I had had more time in Seattle, as well. I'm really curious now to figure out what those three annoying lights were. Really, though, considering Kerry Park is well known for its viewpoint, you'd think they wouldn't be allowed to put lights like that! I live in Yakima about 2 hours away and what with work, it's hard to find time to get over there, especially at night.

Josh220, the photos from the space needle you have are really amazing! Was there a lot of post processing involved in those, or how did you get such great shots? I also really enjoy the stormtrooper photos!

JessicaLynn · Feb 10, 2012

wow gorgeous view! So jealous! lol your pictures are fun to look at

however i agree with APHPHOTO, the three bright lights are distracting... but besides that nice job

oh i also like ur lizard! hahaha too funny

Bossy · Feb 10, 2012

These are basically uneditted correct?

RxForB3 · Feb 10, 2012

Completely unedited. I don't even have a photo editing program yet aside from the one that came with the T3i. Right now I figure I'll try to lean the best way to take a great picture without editing, then work on the editing part.

Feel free to do any editing of them you'd like and post the results. I'd love to see what could be done. I took the pictures as RAW and jpeg, but I don't suppose the RAW files do me much good till I learn some editing techniques. If you do edit them, I'd appreciate if you mention what you use and at least a little descripton of the process.

To JessicaLynn: Those three lights are kind of a train wreck. You just can't look away!

Thanks again!

BuS_RiDeR · Feb 11, 2012

Nice work.

Number 1 and number 7 get my votes.

Vtec44 · Feb 11, 2012

I like #2. It seems like the weird reflection is caused by some sort of filter?

Josh220 · Feb 11, 2012

RxForB3 said:
Josh220, the photos from the space needle you have are really amazing! Was there a lot of post processing involved in those, or how did you get such great shots? I also really enjoy the stormtrooper photos!

Thanks! They are HDR's, but other than that there was very little done in post other than desaturation (HDR's often oversaturate) and adding contrast.

RxForB3 · Feb 11, 2012

Vtec44 said:
I like #2. It seems like the weird reflection is caused by some sort of filter?

By weird reflection, do you mean that the lights at the bottom of pic 2 make it look like it was caused by some sort of filter, or are you referring to the UFOs in pics 1, 3, and 4? If the latter, you really made me wonder for a second since I did have a filter on the 18-55mm lens, but not on the 50mm I used in those three pics. On that line of thought, someone on Facebook recommended that I use a polarized filter. Seems like an odd idea to me, but then I'm a newbie. Any thoughts on this?