Newbie Seeking Advice

[Miruke]

Hey everyone

I'm new here and new to photography (like literally only been at this for about two weeks). I'm loving photography and trying to learn as much as possible.

I'm posting some first pics here to get some feedback, though I must confess I'm a bit nervous. Please don't hesitate to give comments or suggestions or criticisms.

Right now I'm really trying to focus on learning composition basics and lighting basics. Comments related to those areas would be especially appreciated.

All of these were taken with a Samsung compact digital camera.

[Donald]

I think the 'big' problem with this one, Mir, is that it's blurred. There's nothing that's sharp in it. The leaves might be blurred because they were blowing in the wind and your shutter speed wasn't fast enough to freeze them. But we can also see that the brickwork on the chimney breasts is also not sharp.

Another thing to watch out for when photographing things like buildings with a wide angle lens is distortion. I'd guess that you actually had the camera pointing upwards when you took this. If you look at the edge of the left-hand chimney, it's sloping in to the right. Then, if you look at the right-hand chimney. It's sloping in to the left.

You can do that for artistic effect and it can work. But it needs to be a conscious decision. In this case, I suspect it was maybe an accident that it happened.

I think this is a good composition, but I think you've pushed it a bit too far in post-processing. The colours don't look natural to my eye and the clouds don't look natural (there are hard edges on them)

Not a lot wrong with that. Good foreground interest and and good strong line taking us back into the image.

I'll let others come into to on the flowers.

[Miruke]

Thanks Donald so much for your comments they are greatly appreciated and very helpful!

Yes, in the cabin picture it was very windy. I have a small compact digital camera and I've been searching and searching for a way to change the shutter speed but haven't found it. I did just find a mode called children, that says it's for children at play. I'm guessing that will increase the shutter speed, I'm just not sure by how much. I will experiment with it and see how it works.

As far as the lens goes I'm not sure what to do that might help. I see how it's distorted. I can't change lenses on my little camera or anything so I just zoomed out as far as I could. I was wondering is there like a point in zooming out where you know things will start to get distorted?

Also, yes, I must admit too much PP with the second pic. The lighting was all wrong and I was trying to fix it. The cloud made the sky too white and the whole pic was very washed out. I tried fixing it but am not really sure what to do in PP that would help or if I just need to work on taking better pics to begin with, which is something I really hope to learn LOL, I just learned what a color histogram was yesterday. Well, anyways, like I said any advice on PP would also be appreciated. Maybe I'll post the old pic to see if anyone could give some PP advice.

Thanks again for the comments.

[Geoff F]

These are all rather tricky scenes to shoot, Mir.

I agree with Donald's previous comments.

The daffodil looks fine but the last flower is a bit soft/blurred.

Your shutter speed was a bit on the low side. Even with a tripod, you can get windrock problems at those speeds. And there is light coming towards you which adds to the potential problems.