Trust me, I'm not fishing for compliments.
Well, I can't help feeling that you sound it, though, being very defensive about a photo that you call a "failure" in the first post, and keeping a thread busy and going on and on and on with individual quotations and replies, trying to prove you how active and "important" (and popular?) you are on this forum... it's just that you do not come across as "modest" --- but you try in words to let us think so, which you don't succeed in. Too many words for that, I'm afraid.
Truly unbelievable.
Professionals snidely judging photos in a beginners forum AND judging character too????????????
Do you actually think that I believe that I've produced a masterpiece????
Your basic run of the mill garden WEED found in the back yard??????????
I was testing the " smart telephoto" mode on Sony's a550 at 300MM which effectively DOUBLES that focal length to 600mm, while using a very small aperture and slow shutter.
Then comes " Oh get a new subject, bla bla bla" Snide as snide can be.
Don't you think I should at least learn, or try to learn the basics, or SOME of the basics before treking the universe, wasting my time, searching for that perfect subject so I can photograph it incorrectly???????
So I can incorrectly use photo software on it that I have never before used until the other day?
I freely admit that I really don't know what I'm doing and this is seen as fishing for compliments in a beginners forum????????
I must be missing something here. Or you might be.
Then the remarks about blowing up an image.
The basics go back to the beginning of time with film in that the more you enlarge a photo, the more distorted it becomes.
The more noisy/grainy it becomes. Yet in a digital age, this is supposed to magically disappear? Because it's digital???
Not one comment on this other than, " When you zoom in, it looks like a painting"
As if to say , " Well when you blow the photo up it should become more sharp and detailed"
WRONG, completely WRONG.
Yet no one mentions it.
I'm amazed.
I'm afraid I'm not fishing for compliments. Sorry you feel that way.
I might also mention that the spider is TINY.
Most likely 1/10 the size of a dime or less. Or in comparison, the tip of a ball point pen