New Photograpgher

[mclar146]

first of all hello everyone, just signed up today.

well i have only been gotten into photography since Christmas when i was given a canon 500D. i shoot in full manual mode and i am just starting to get used to it.
any how here is my flickr page
Flickr: MClarkePhotos' Photostream

and a couple of pictures, and comments would be appreciated. (c4c)

Day Time Moon by MClarkePhotos, on Flickr

Neil Street by MClarkePhotos, on Flickr

Byron Bay by MClarkePhotos, on Flickr

 

[WesternGuy]

G'day mclar146 and welcome. I had a look at your Flickr page and I think you are off to a reasonable start, if you have just been doing this since Christmas 2010. As for the ones you have posted, the first 2 don't really do anything for me...don't know why, they just don't. I suspect that this is one of those things that I do myself from time to time - I try something and it just doesn't work the way I had hoped it would, or wanted it to - but that's photography - you try something and either it works or is doesn't and if it doesn't then you try something else.

The third one is a fairly decent landscape/seascape, but I would crop some of the sky out and see if I couldn't bring out some more of the hills in the background - maybe a contrast boost - don't know...I would also clone out that piece of vegetation that is sticking up in the lower middle part of the image - it detracts a bit from the view along the shore. It may be just the way it is showing up on my monitor, but the horizon in #3 looks a little bit off horizontal. This can be checked fairly easily and quickly in most editing software. If you wouldn't mind answering a few questions as I am just a bit curious - are these raw images? what software do you use in your post-processing? Thanks.

One suggestion, is that you might want to do a little reading on composition - lots of stuff on the web and there are also some very good books on the subject as well - if you are not already aware of it, check out something called the "rule of thirds"...not really a hard and fast rule, but more of a guideline. HTH.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

 

[mclar146]

Thanks WesternGuy.
the photos that i posted were taken in the JPEG format, but of late i have changed to raw.

i use Adobe Photoshop CS5 for post-processing, but i am still a figuring everything out in it.

cheers Matt.