Northwest Springtime (C&C)

[Sherman Banks]

Our weather here in Seattle has finally let up a little, so I took a trip to Greenlake to get some shots. I used my 55-200 pretty much the whole time which I forced myself to do in order to get out of the habit of shooting everything wide angle. Here some of the better ones I got based on lighting, texture, color, and DOF. Let me know what you think.
1.
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2.

3.
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[prodigy2k7]

#1 and #3 underexposed
#2 cool angle,

 

[LaFoto]

I think you did well, I love spring and the cherry blossoms, and I love them BACKLIT (only took a couple of pics of our cherry tree in bloom earlier this morning against the early morning light), so the second photo is just how I like to see them.
And funny to hear you say you have to force yourself away from shooting everything wide-angle. At first I got so used to doing close-ups, I really had to learn how to see and frame wide-angle shots .

 

[Sherman Banks]

Here are better versions of #1 and 3. Thanks for the input, I trusted camera raw's auto exposure and went against my better judgment even though I knew better. I'm glad I have this forum of people to help correct dumb errors like these. Let me know if you think I pushed it too far (I'm working off of a 14" laptop monitor).

 

[Sherman Banks]

I think you did well, I love spring and the cherry blossoms, and I love them BACKLIT (only took a couple of pics of our cherry tree in bloom earlier this morning against the early morning light), so the second photo is just how I like to see them.
And funny to hear you say you have to force yourself away from shooting everything wide-angle. At first I got so used to doing close-ups, I really had to learn how to see and frame wide-angle shots .

Thanks, that means a lot coming from you! I usually just toted around my 18-55 because I only considered my 55-200 to be something for long range shots, but it works great for shallow DOF on relatively close things. I'm sure I'll find myself using it much more now. I have some more shots I may post up but they are on my flickr page as well.

Thanks again for the feedback!

 

[prodigy2k7]

Your profile says photos are okay to edit, this is what I did in about 30 seconds time:

I fixed the white balance on both images, (sorta lol, i used the flower as "white" for my picker/dropper tool)

I also bumped up exposure slightly

 

[Sherman Banks]

I was afraid of pushing it too far and losing any detail on the pedals but these look great. Thanks for the edit, I'll have to work with pushing my exposure and white balance more.

 

[prodigy2k7]

No harm in trying eh? Even if you overexpose in post-processing, just undo it