First of all, hello! I’m pretty glad to be a part of this fabulous Group of people (and photographers).
A couple of months ago I purchased my first DSLR (Nikon D5100) and a beautiful 35mm f1.8 lens. I want to learn, by my own, how to improve in the art (science?) of taking photos. I know almost all the basics: what is shutter speed, diaphragm, ISO, little of composition, etc. Now, I want to get deeper understanding of the camera and the techniques, but the thing is that I don’t know where to start, what subjects I have to take into account, and a steady curve of learning.
Could you please point me in the right direction, and help me to make a list of subject so I don’t forget any?
Here are some of my pictures:
Flickr damian.demasi s Photostream
There are numerous threads similar to your own all over this section of the forum. There are even a few links to similar threads at the bottom of this page. The "right direction" will be found in those threads as everyone eventually needs the same basic information. So do read what others have said and you'll find a wealth of information and suggestions to pull from.
Two rough suggestions I would make to anyone beginning in photography would be; 1) use your camera regularly and 2) work on only one thing at any one time. First, if you were learning a new language or taking up a musical instrument, you would want to practice virtually everyday for at least a few minutes. Ten minutes each day is time better spent than three hours every other weekend. Second, take one aspect of your work and see where you can take it today. Photography is a unique mixture of technology and the ability to envision how light and shadows can play to your benefit through standard compositional tools and knowing when best to bend those rules. You develop those skills largely through using them and being critical of your own work. Like the student guitarist, the recording of your work is the greatest and often the most startling instructional tool you have at your disposal. Of course, recording your ideas is what photography is all about. now you simply need to learn how to be critical of what you've done. Do, though, work on only one thing each day. A guitarist will learn, say, the blues scale faster and have greater retention of the scale if they practice just the blues scale today. Up and down the neck and diagonally across the neck. Ascending and descending, just the blues scale. If they jump from the blues scale to the Dorian scale and then the Mixolydian scale and back and forth and back and forth without any great plan, they get virtually nowhere faster than any other method. Learning the blues scale then as it relates to music, gives them an anchor with which they can hear the relationships. As with photography, when you change one thing, you affect another. You need to isolate what it is you're changing to be effective at your self instruction. So, even if it's just that you are going to work on, say, shutter speed or metering variables today, only work on shutter speed or metering variables for the majority of your work. Defining what has changed in a single variable makes for faster learning and less confusion sorting out after the fact what did change to affect the result you prefer.
Looking over your collection of photos, I would say a few things should be on your mind. First and foremost, virtually every shot appears to have been taken with a very small aperture setting. The focus looks as though your camera had an "infinity" setting and you were uncomfortable moving off that one setting. The few shots where you have blurred the background so the subject matter stands apart also look as though you have a generic "portrait" setting which you fall back on. This gives your collection an either "this" or "that" quality that doesn't say you have a nice DSLR. The same results could have been captured with a fairly inexpensive compact camera. You need to explore the range of DOF which is allowed by your nice DSLR and its very fast lens.
Next, while your shots are pleasant and not lacking so much in composition, it would seem you are seeing mostly the same ideas in your head before you shoot. You are finding the same images interesting though taken as a collection they don't hold interest when they all have a similar appearance. You have a building in front of you and you shoot a photo of the building. OK, why? Why would I care to see a bunch of photos of buildings you came across when they mean nothing to me? Building. Building, Building. Building from an angle. Building from the front. Another building. Again, unless all you want are shots of buildings that are of little to no interest to the observer of your photography, you'll need to change how you see and think about buildings. Why should I care about "this" building? Is there some architectural detail which is of value beyond just the fact it's a rather large building? If so, show me that detail. Show me that building under different lighting conditions. IMO, photography is about capturing an "event" in time just as an audio recording is about the performance as it exists right now. Not the performance tomorrow or last year. What is the event which you want me to exam that you saw occurring and captured in a photograph? A building which has stood for decades isn't, on its face, much of an event. How the light plays across some detail of the building might be.
Show me the line(s), the direction in which you want my eye to travel, the negative space surrounding the subject. Keep me looking at your shot rather than simply moving on from another photo of another building. Are there repeating patterns which you find interesting? Show me those. Show me some thing about that building that strikes me as possibly not the same shot any tourist would have taken while on the bus. A decent rule to follow as a beginner is to wait for at least 30 seconds, and maybe even more, to consider what you are about to photograph. If it will simply look like a travelogue image, why bother? You need to be more creative in what you see and then show us what you've seen so that we might remember that image for more than the time it takes to forward to the next image. As is, your catalog has very little which makes me want to stay on one shot any longer than the rest.
Finally, your initial work shown in your images doesn't have much in the way of dynamic range. No highs and no lows, all medium values. Sort of like talking in a monotone or playing an instrument for use in an elevator. Where's the drama? Where are those portions of your shot which leap off the page? Where are those dynamically opposed bits which hide from easy view? Where you have shadow, you have shadow, nothing more. Highlights are not greatly displayed in your work. Almost as if you only go out shooting when it's overcast. Possibly, you need to learn how to work with the exposure compensation control but all of your shots have a similarity - a drabness and flatness of light and shadow - that doesn't, IMO, occur in nature and should not be occuring in each shot you take.
Most of all, I think, you need to begin thinking about what you can show us that is unique. We don't need another middle of the road, dynamically flat shot of another large building. What can you find that no one else has likely found before? Show us that. Be different than the thousands and thousands of photographers who have seen that same flower or that same building or that same landscape before you got there. It's not an easy thing to learn since the easy shot has become so conventionally ubiquitous we accept it as a good shot and hurry on to the next good, not great, shot. However, what you've shown us so far isn't what can be achieved with a high end DSLR and lens.
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