Gorgeous Day for Ladder Training C&C welcome

[stsinner]

I took this picture one day when we were training on ladders and rappelling.

 

[chrisburke]

not to bad at all.. i don't know about that sun though... I would crop it out, but thats a personal preference... love how blue the sky is.. is this PP or straight from the camera?

 

[stsinner]

That is straight from the camera. Thanks for the comments.

 

[chrisburke]

That is straight from the camera. Thanks for the comments.

wow, i'm very impressed with the blue sky for straight from camera, way to go!!! if you do any PP, i wouldnt touch the sky, as it looks beautiful... i love those perfect days when the sky is just crying for you to take pics of it

 

[stsinner]

It was a very beautiful sky. I'm not only new to this forum, but I'm very new to photography, and I don't know much at all about PP. I hove Photoshop 7 and Lightroom 2, but I'm not good at either, so I usually don't touch my pictures. If I do, it's usually something as remedial as doing an "auto levels" in Photoshop for the contrast. I never do color adjustments manually, because I'm not very good at it. This particular photo is one of my favorites, so thanks for your comments. We do a lot of training at night, and since our gear has reflective strips all over it, I have to take a lot of pictures with the flash off, or the reflective strips dominate the picture and ruin it. That's where I'm learning the most about ISO and Shutter Speed.

Here's an example:

But if I leave the flash off and go into Program mode, and HOLD REAL STILL, I can get a better picture and you can actually see what's going on:

 

[chrisburke]

if your new to PP, i can honestly say that LightRoom will be your friend.. I've been using photoshop for YEARS, so I know it inside and out.. but lightroom is so easy to use, and with little to no "know how" in regards to PP you can really make a photo spectacular... i might suggest to you to mess around with the settings under "develop" in LR.. if you do something you dont like, just hit edit undo.. you cant ruin your photos... and soon enough, you will start to notice what things you really like adjustment wise.. like for me I LOVE the clarity tool and the saturation tool in LR.. i like to boost up the clarity (cause it sometimes adds more deffination to a photo) its not for every photo, but its a great tool.. and I'm a sucker for saturation.. I love especially when its skateboarding shots (of which I do a lot) to just bump the saturation down a touch, it gives some cool effects.

in regards to the night shots.. yea, they are really hard without a tripod... and i totally understand that as a firefighter you dont have time to lug around a tripod.. but it will really make a HUGE difference in your night shots... as for the reflectors... if your using an external flash, you could try fancing your flash away from the guys, it will give you a little less of the brightness on the reflectors.. and if your using a built in flash, maybe even a bounce card could help some.