Total Beginner.

[iRhys]

I'm very new to photography. I got my camera on the 12th October 2011 for my 16th Birthday. :mrgreen:

 

[tirediron]

Welcome to the forum!

 

[iRhys]

Thank You!

What do you think of the shot?

 

[fjrabon]

awesome, welcome! I'm pretty new too. I got my camera like three days later than you.

I like your use of backlighting here to show the veins of the leaf. You have some good bokeh (blurry background). Also, I don't know if it was intentional, but shooting an odd number of subjects is usually a good idea.

Two things I'd recommend here. One, unless you're going to zoom in even more on your subject, don't center it. You really only center your subject in two cases: 1) when you're going for perfect symmetry (which isn't the case here) or when you're doing macro (and in that case it's more of a necessity, because usually the edges are a little distorted with macro and the sharpest focus will be in the dead center.

Here, I would have maybe moved a bit to the left with my feet, to take the building out of the background, and then put the central leaf on the left third line

 

[KmH]

Compositionally the shot is weak for a number of reasons.

The main subject is in the center of the frame. Composition: Using the Rule of Thirds
The main subject has little contrast, color wise, with the background. Photography Rules of Composition: Visual Weight
The main subject occupies to smal a percentage of the total image frame.

Bokeh is an Americanized Japanese word (boke) (1997 in Photo Techniques magazine, by Mike Johnston) that actually refers to the Circle of Confusion a lens produces. CoC (bokeh) is not adjustable. CoC determines the visual quality, or lack of visual quality a blurred background has. Circle of confusion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[iRhys]

Thanks for the comments and advice. Its a little dark but I'm going to go out right now to take a few shots of the same area. I will post the best ones.

 

[fjrabon]

be aware that an hour before and after sunset is actually the best time of day to shoot.

 

[KmH]

I cropped, selected just the leaves and the stem, darkened the background, adjusted the mid-tone contrast, sharpened, and added a black border;

 

[iRhys]

Oh ok thank you, it looks lots better! I couldn't get a good shot. Its too dark. But this one is okay I guess.