My Photos

[Jaimes]

[Jaimes]

Please comment!!! They showed up a little more blury on this site.... :P
-Jaimes 12 years-

[Jaimes]

[epmi314]

Jaimes is my niece and I am a proud uncle! You have a great eye and passion for nature and photography. A combination that will serve you for a lifetime. Remember what Rob said to you on one of your posts... When you wake up tomorrow say... "I'm 12 years old and I am a photographer."

[ktuli]

Whoa! Slow down there, buddy!

You'll find that folks often get overwhelmed when you post too many photos on a thread at once. They don't know where to begin to give feedback. Often it is better to post one or two, and ask for specific feedback - maybe even point out some of what you feel you did right or wrong with the image, give us an idea of what made you take the photo, and what you were trying to convey with the photo when you took it.

I'll start with your snake photo up top....

You've got a great subject there, and you did a good job of capturing the moment. The shot conveys more action than many snake shots that are just a snake resting all coiled up, so I find it more interesting that way (it is different and fresh). You do have a little bit of blur by the head - probably from the snake moving - and so a slightly faster shutterspeed might have helped to get things crisp. Also (and this one is debatable here) often-times, you want to get down to eye level with your subject - catching eye contact if possible. The reason I say this is debatable is because I think it would change how the snake is portrayed in the image, and from the vantage point you took, we get a better idea of the curves and line of the snake instead of just a flat image. So both could be right, but something to think about next time (ie: take both shots since digital cameras make it easy!).

Keep 'em coming (but maybe not in such a flurry)

- Bill

[Jaimes]

Thanks! Both of you! Hey what do you guys think of the cactus one??? I think that's my fav out of these....
-Jaimes 12 years-

[Geoff F]

They showed up a little more blurry on this site.... :P

A common problem, Jaimes. How are you doing your final processing and what image size?

I find the best answer is to resize downwards to 700 pixels, or a little less, on the long side and no more than 150 kb. Anything bigger will get automatically resized which can cause a bit of softness.

The exact resizing method varies a little from person to person. I resize using the Bicubic Interpolation method; some people prefer Bicubic Sharpener but I find this doesn't have the same manual control as my method (not my invention, it is used by many other people who are far cleverer than me).

Some software will use different names for these options.

Anyway, to continue, after doing the resize add a little bit of Unsharp Mask. I normally use something around 50 - 0.5 - 0 but other people may use something different and it is variable between different images.

Then save as a Jpeg with sufficient compression to get you below the 150 kb limit.

And with regard to your photos.

Ideally I would have liked to see the snake's head facing towards me; but in reality you did well to get what you have!

Swans are notoriously difficult to get correct, but you have managed to avoid over exposure, a common problem, and have retained good detail.

The bird photos are excellent. Just make sure you don't get too close to scare them.

The flower has good detail and exposure. It is a pity that the background is so close; but you couldn't really do anything about that.

And save the cactus heart until next St Valentine's Day - then type a suitable message across it.

Just one suggestion, for your next steep learning curve. Have a look at Selective Sharpening which just adds sharpening to the subject and not the background. Yes, it is a bit of a jump and entails using masks etc but if you continue with this type of photo it will make a lot of difference and really make your main subjects stand out from the background. But don't overdo it.

One 'cheating' method which I sometimes use is to draw a freehand selection around the area to be sharpened. You don't have to be exact as long as you are just outside the required area. Feather the selection by something between 5 and 10 pixels.

Then sharpen; and the sharpness will only apply to the selected area.

Sometimes you will get a slight visible line but most times the feathering will cover that. But once again, don't overdo it; I normally reckon that Unsharp Mask around 100 - 1.0 - 2 is the maximum.

[Jaimes]

Thanks I just learned to use photo shop, but my uncle has been helping a lot. Good ideas... the cactus would be good for Valentine's day...
-Jaimes 12 years-

[WilliamS]

Some great photos , Keep up the good work

[Dons]

Hey Jaimes, you really have a good eye.. Great photos you have..
My fav is the little bird looking for mom (i think...)..
Now some question from me.. What mode do you use on your camera when you take photo??
I teach my daughter (she's 7 years old) this, if you wanna take from a still object then you should use aperture priority (AV mode) and if you wanna take a moving object then you use a speed priority (TV mode).. After you mastered this then you move on with the manual mode.. And one more thing, if you take photo of people or animals, set your focus point on the eye...
I will post some of the photos that my daughter take, that if you allow me to post here..
Keep up the good work...

[Jaimes]

I took most of those in AV... but sometimes I experiment by shoting the photo in different settings then keep my fav......

-Jaimes 12 years-

[Jaimes]

What do you guys think of this one?
-Jaimes 12 years-

[Geoff F]

I would prefer the trees to be vertical and for me there is too much out of focus foreground.

But the main subject is sharp and well exposed so I would like to do a rotation then crop tighter. You should be able to crop to landscape orientation at say 3 x 2 ratio (or 5 x 4) and get an excellent result here. If you have already done some cropping you can start again from the original. If not it will be tight on the right side but I think it can still work.

[epmi314]

Jaimes, Geoff is right on the turtle photo. It is close to being great but the trees should be vertical. A little post processing work in PS should fix it up quite nicely. I can give you some help if you want.... Let me know.