[john0213]

Hi,

I've just started photography for exactly 4 weeks and these are my recent works. I have to say I've come a longggg way from completely unaware of what the photography world is going on to this stage. Before I got into photography, I did a lot of research and ended up purchasing a used 40d body with the 17-55mm f/2.8 IS lens. I have to say the online forum did helped me a lot on my sounded decision. I can vouch to all the beginners that, it is very true to invest into lens more than your body as it will end up providing you with way better result.

I'm currently walking through my learning curve with HDR.

How can i improve these shots? I know it's a little bit overkilled though.





This is a previous work, the very first daytime HDR i've ever done. I know for a fact i got the focus and focal distance completely off so the background was kinda soft. Because the background wasn't ideally focused in the first place, i've went ahead and used the soft clarity theme to try to set off that japanese garden mood. Not sure if i'm doing it correctly though.


Also one of my early work, the picture quality was quite good to begin with so the HDR wasn't exactly helping the image by far.

[1013mm]

the garden one is a bit overkill but the rest are pretty nice!

[MCS]

I like your photos - Very heavy Saturation.

Try a couple of thinngs:

Black and White photography

Close up and/or framing the photo on 1 subject

Enjoy!

[orangepeelforest]

That 2nd one is absolutely amazing. i love it.

[darkphantom]

very nice, but like they said, a bit heavy on the saturation. I don't have an SLR yet, but I can only imagine what my pictures would turn out to be. I only have a 5mp phone camera to test it out with :P

That first shot is amazing...! keep up the good work

[john0213]

guess i should really tone down my saturation a bit~~ LOL

great to hear more from you guys~!!

[InsaneSkippy]

Originally Posted by 328ZSP

That 2nd one is absolutely amazing. i love it.

I agree, the colors are absolutely stunning, without being TOO overdone.

[john0213]

MCS:

something with subject, you mean like these?

[c0nstant]

very nice

[m3pare]

first two pics are sickkkkkk

[dcstep]

You're off to a flying start. Keep experimenting. I like the boats the best.

Your use of saturation is not really that far off. If you've watched CSI Miami you'll see that you didn't go any further than them. The rock's blue shadow IS a bit much, but all the others are within the bonds of reason. One or two knotches up on the Sat control really is attractive to the average viewer.

Dave

[john0213]

the first two pics were taken at the airport. spent around 2 hrs and I was only able to take three scenes. Surprisingly, you guys seems to really enjoy the first two out of the 3 scenes so far. I haven't edit the last one yet so we will see how that comes out~

[MCS]

Nice pics - i like your depth of field/aperture in the flower photo.

I didn't say that I didn't like your first set of photos

Best suggestion - Keep on experimenting and take a read at www.photo.net go to the learning tab/section

The projects that Philip Greenspun suggests are really good.

Enjoy your new-found hobby; you'll be forever chasing after the best light and framing. My best advice is not to stress too much over the equipment - its constantly getting better and you can easily spend ridiculous amount of $$ on the gear (which contributes the least to the quality of the pics)...

[PNF]

Originally Posted by MCS

My best advice is not to stress too much over the equipment - its constantly getting better and you can easily spend ridiculous amount of $$ on the gear (which contributes the least to the quality of the pics)...

While I agree not to stress too much on the gear, but gear matters and the contribute directly on how the photos will look.

I personally dont like too much "processing" after pictures are taken. I do agree that some processing are needed, but it should come last in mind as in "its ok, I'll just process it at home, or use HDR or whatnots" to make the shot look better.

Glasses MATTERS!! You can always process a sharp pictures to be "unsharp", but not the other way around.

I'd say, invest in lens and a good flashlight! Glasses / light are what matters!

Of course, composition as well..

I am a beginning myself and I have been buying/reading a lot of photography composition books. They help quite a bit!!

I bought most of them on half.com for around $5-10 shipped!! Well worth it.

[john0213]

definitely agree on all of your opinion!

I've just added a 70-200 f/2.8 IS to my collection. IMHO, buy what you need. if you have the money, always invest into the best lens you can reach. the theory behind this is that sooner or later you will outgrow your lens. the whole upgrade process for non-L lenses are that, if it's not a worthy lens, the resale value is going to be crap.

However, I really do agree on avoiding to chase any body model. going from 40d to 50d is somewhat non sense unless that video capturing feature is really important for you. the only logical upgrade for body would be from Crop frame to Full Frame, or upgrading from 10d to 40d.

[1013mm]

Originally Posted by john0213

definitely agree on all of your opinion!

I've just added a 70-200 f/2.8 IS to my collection. IMHO, buy what you need. if you have the money, always invest into the best lens you can reach. the theory behind this is that sooner or later you will outgrow your lens. the whole upgrade process for non-L lenses are that, if it's not a worthy lens, the resale value is going to be crap.

However, I really do agree on avoiding to chase any body model. going from 40d to 50d is somewhat non sense unless that video capturing feature is really important for you. the only logical upgrade for body would be from Crop frame to Full Frame, or upgrading from 10d to 40d.

Yep!

[john0213]

Originally Posted by MCS

Nice pics - i like your depth of field/aperture in the flower photo.

I didn't say that I didn't like your first set of photos

Best suggestion - Keep on experimenting and take a read at www.photo.net go to the learning tab/section

The projects that Philip Greenspun suggests are really good.

Enjoy your new-found hobby; you'll be forever chasing after the best light and framing. My best advice is not to stress too much over the equipment - its constantly getting better and you can easily spend ridiculous amount of $$ on the gear (which contributes the least to the quality of the pics)...

wow!!!! that's a great site~!! i'll check into this later!!

[nvez]

haha, i thought those pictures were amazing.

the best part my sister was right next to me and she said "woah, is this 3d or real?", and she thinks it looks awesome, so do I, good work man.

[john0213]

Originally Posted by nvez

haha, i thought those pictures were amazing.

the best part my sister was right next to me and she said "woah, is this 3d or real?", and she thinks it looks awesome, so do I, good work man.

Thx!!! I must say that photography is a very addicting hobby~! especially when the end result comes out real good!

[ohaywood]

I love the first one. Gives me a great feeling.. can't explain it.

Impressed

[john0213]

Thanks~!!! I've got a collection of pictures in my hard drive now that i want to find a place to host them.

I am currently using photobucket but it's only good for hosting pic to be posted on the forum. it's not exactly user friendly when you just want to display all your collection to the public.

I've also checked flickr too, but there is a annual fee for premium acc.....

[dcstep]

I've been using Flickr for three or four years and more seriously in the last few months.

Flickr has Groups by subject type like "Sunset", "Flowers", "Travel", "BMW", "Macro Flowers", "Archetecture", "Portraits", "Landscapes", etc., etc. So you post in your own "Photostream" and then join Groups and additionally post in those groups and sometimes Comment on the works of others.

If you chose Flickr be sure to activate "Statistics" so that you have real time and historical statistics about how many have looked at your pictures, or Downloaded, Commented or chosen as a Favorite. It's really informative to see what people like and don't like. Giving each picture a title and using Tags helps people find them.

Think about copyright. Flickr talks about the different licenses that you can grant. People and companies actually "mine" Flickr for images. I've licensed a couple of mine to companies good enough to ask permission. Consider imbedding a copyright mark on your images.

Set up your Photostream by topic in groupings called "Sets" and be self-critical and don't just throw everything up and hope something sticks. Show your best work. Occasionally you may want to post a lot of pictures for some affinity group, such as a BMW club. That's ok. If people see that you normally post sets of 3 to 10 images and there's a Set with 200, they'll avoid the one with 200.

Some friends use Picasa. As a visitor it seems to be easy to navigate and quick to load, but I don't know how it is from the user point of view.

Oh, with Flickr, the separate image downloader is faster and more reliable than the one imbedded in the site, so use that. Also, Resize down to something like 1200 on the longest side. You CAN post original files and Flickr automatically makes display sizes, BUT the downloads will be painfully slow.

Dave