Would love some feedback/constructive criticism

[skeen]

Hi all,

You could say that I'm new to photography in that it's been a few years since I was into it seriously.

I recently bought myself a Panasonic DMC-GF1, with the 1:3.5-5.6/14-45 Kit Zoom.

I've weened myself off the AUTO mode, and took the camera out for some experimentation today.

These are the pics I chose, and processed in Light Room. You can see the camera settings in the info pane.

I'd love to get your general feedback and constructive criticism. I like quite a few of them, but I think they could all be improved upon.

Thanks a lot, and I hope to see you around generally as I'm a new member. :thumbup:

 

[arcooke]

There are some nice ones in the bunch for sure. I like the one with the girl's arms stretched out .. even though it's grainy and out of focus, it's a really nice photo. I'd probably crop it off where the solid black bar starts at the bottom though. I also like the lights with the picture frame below them.

The pretzel is almost on my list of likes. Be mindful of your surroundings.. there' a fork poking out in the pretzel picture that's a bit distracting.

 

[PhillyPhoton]

Really like 13, how long was the exposure?

 

[skeen]

There are some nice ones in the bunch for sure. I like the one with the girl's arms stretched out .. even though it's grainy and out of focus, it's a really nice photo. I'd probably crop it off where the solid black bar starts at the bottom though. I also like the lights with the picture frame below them.

The pretzel is almost on my list of likes. Be mindful of your surroundings.. there' a fork poking out in the pretzel picture that's a bit distracting.

Good comments, thanks. I find that if I take a photo, and it's quite blurred...it might look a lot better in black and white. Do you concur?

For instance, I quite like this one:

...but in colour it's pretty awful.

I think this one would have turned out quite a bit better if the subjects were in focus more, and if the lady on the left was out of frame:

Really like 13, how long was the exposure?

Thanks 20s exposure.

 

[Syco]

There's some good photos in your collection. If you're weaning yourself off of auto mode, watch your aperture settings on the deep focus images (like the pretzel).

The other comment I have is much more technical and relates to B&W images. You have what we used to refer to as "panchromatic sky". In the days of 35mm panchromatic B&W film, a particular film/developer combination rendered the film relatively insensitive to blue. Hence, the sky was rendered as white. In order to get skies darker and more interesting, you had to use a filter (yellow or red or something in between). Digital cameras are also under-sensitive to blue, so sky images rendered into B&W come out whiter than the eye tells us they should be. Yours may have been taken on a cloudy day, I don't know, but the effect is the same.

There are cures for this problem. For example, Photoshop Elements allows you to variably mix the R, G and B channels in different ways to get different B&W renderings. Photoshop CS is even more sophisticated.

Sorry if that was too geeky but, hey, going off auto mode is a big step!

 

[skeen]

Very interesting - thank you. I'll bare it in mind. It was actually a cloudy day, but I was concerned with how the sky was coming out.