Help me improve:)

[mrsmacdeezy]

Thanks

 

[Raian-san]

The 1st one I like the concept but the angle seem to be a little off.

2nd and 3rd was a little ordinary.

4th picture was really good. You can see the sadness in the dog eyes. I would photoshop it and make the photo a little darker because it's so bright for the way they dog look. Just my 2 cents.

 

[mrsmacdeezy]

Thanks for sharing, Raian! I actually have edited all of them, but I posted pics of my originals mainly to get feedback for how to better my camera setting skills for the future. Hopefully I worded that in a way that makes sense

 

[subscuck]

I have only shot raw once, but I'm such a packrat with my pics. I'm afraid to do it on a regular basis because of the space it will take up on my hard drive. Does it make enough difference that I should do it more?

When you shoot jpeg, your camera processes the image and in the process throws out a lot of the data when it compresses it. This makes editing very limited. RAW preserves all the data, and with Photoshop and ACR, gives you the ability to edit in 16-bit. Editing RAW files also allows you to change some things after the fact (exposure, WB) that you can't change (not very well, anyway) with a jpeg. I always shoot RAW, as do most people here, because I want the absolute best control over editing I can have. If HD space is a concern, get an external for your pics, they're pretty cheap these days.

 

[mrsmacdeezy]

Thanks for taking that in depth for me, subscuck. Def. sounds like good enough reasoning to shoot raw a lot more than I currently do! I just need to learn to go through my pics and make myself decide which ones are keepers and which ones to get rid of when I put them on my computer. If I make myself do that, space won't be so much of a problem.

 

[pgriz]

Disk space is cheap, with 1 TB drives selling for less than $200. So shoot RAW and then, you've got much better control over the "development" of your images. You do want to figure out a reliable work-flow so that you get your images both safe (ie, backed up) and tagged (so much easier to find later). Beyond that, to really benefit from your experiments, you need to keep a log-book where you note what you were trying to do, what settings you used, and later, once you've reviewed your images on the computer, you can decide what worked well and what didn't. The EXIF data on the images does help, but you don't have the additional info of whether you were using a tripod, whether the flash was off-camera, whether the light was behind you or on the side, whether you were using a polarizer or not, etc. etc.

Good photographers that I try to emulate have told me to have a strategy in place for whatever you're doing, then adapt to the conditions at hand, and RECORD what you're doing. Later, when you are reviewing your shots, you can see what worked and what didn't. The next time around, you will have that experience to guide you. It really accelerates the learning curve and reduces the "error" in the "trial and error" method.

 

[vtf]

I used unsharp mask on 1,2 and 4 and it helped with the clarity and sharpness (did not post them tho). I shoot in RAW because it allows me to control everything and alot can be done to a RAW before it makes it to PSE, ie. white balance, vibrance, skin smoothing etc.