Newbie and his dog

[weemrp]

Hello everyone, I'm completely new to photography (I only bought a DSLR at the beginning of May) and wondered if anyone could give some feedback on the picture below. It's really the first time I have started converting photos to black and white and not sure what I should be looking out for, or what makes a good black and white photo for that matter. In terms of composition I think I would have his head above the horizon line if I had a second go but he can't sit still long enough!!

Any pointers or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,
Stevie

[IMG]Drookit Dug by stevie_penman, on Flickr[/IMG]

[Mike Buckley]

Welcome to CiC, Stevie!

This is a very, very nice start. Your dog's wet hair indeed seems wet and there is a soft catch light in the eyes. You also used a nice depth of field that blurs the background. The black-and-white conversion has a nice rich look to it.

I would actually argue that the horizon would have been better positioned if it had been just a bit higher. Notice the hair that is sticking up above the horizon. That would have been improved if the horizon didn't intersect with that hair. If the horizon was lower, it would probably have to be a lot lower to be pleasing.

For other ideas of dog photography, check out this thread and other threads of Travis. He consistently makes nice photos of his dogs.

There is a very bright area on the right side in the background that is distracting. You'll probably like the image better if you tone it down a bit.

Though you might have intentionally decided not to position the dog in the center of the photo to prevent the composition from being static, this is the kind of photo that I think would be stronger if the composition had been centered.

It seems as if you have used a focal length that might have been short enough to cause just a bit of distortion in the dog, making the face look a bit big and its rear a bit small. Your method of displaying the image has stripped the EXIF information, so I can't tell what focal length you used. Considering that you're just starting out, people could be more helpful if you would either display the basic stuff (camera model, focal length, shutter speed, aperture and ISO) or use an upload method such as Tinypics that doesn't remove the EXIF information.

You mentioned that you don't know what to look for in black-and-white photos. That comes only with time and experience. However, the two books mentioned below will get you going very nicely. I recommend that you review them in the order shown below.

The Complete Guide to Black and White Digital Photography by Michael Freeman
From Oz to Kansas by Vincent Versace

Sorry for the long post, but your photo is so nice that it deserves the attention. I look forward to seeing more of them!

[Shadowman]

Nice effort.

[NorthernFocus]

Hi, Stevie. You're off to a good start. Cute pup.

Mike already mentioned most of the stuff worth mentioning and he's one of the B/W experts on the site. You did good with nice sharp focus on both eyes and nose and got the background blurred a bit. Nicely done.

As Mike said, the most important thing with the horizon is to avoid having it split the subject. Either above or below works. The conventional wisdom for wildlife it to try to shoot from eye level with the animal. But for dogs, people are used to looking down at them and shot from a standing position appeals more to many folks.

Welcome to CIC and looking forward to seeing more of your work.

[bnnrcn]

Welcome Stevie Your dog is so cute and I like your shot very much.

[weemrp]

Wow, thanks for the feedback folks. That's some really great stuff to take on board. I'll take note about the exif information, I wasn't aware that it stripped this off.

camera=Nikon D5200, focal length/lens=35mm f1.8g, aperture=f5, shutter=1/50, iso=500

The bright area on the right is the sun sneaking through the clouds, which I was originally trying to capture but on reflection it does detract from the subject. I'll note this for future. With regards to the horizon line I will try and pay more attention to this next time around. I think I tend to over analyse the subject (and concentrate too much on getting him to sit still for long enough! )and forget about the overall composition.

Thanks for all your kind words. It's great to get some good feedback that I can learn from.

[travis4567]

Stevie, I hope you don't mind, I played with your photo in Lightroom and came up with this.

[weemrp]

Absolutely not. That's great. The crop is much better and the white is really clear.

I really need to learn how to use the functions within Photoshop!

[Mike Buckley]

Stevie,

Now that you've seen Travis's improvements, go back and review the histogram of your original photo. It's very likely that you underexposed the photo by about one stop. It's understandable that you may not yet be aware of how to use the histogram to determine whether you are exposing an image ideally. If so, be sure to check out the tutorial here at CiC about understanding the histogram.

[weemrp]

Thanks Mike. Here's the original as it is, including histogram. I ran through part 1 of the histogram tutorial, but it is all very new to me. By my reckoning the highlights are the break in the clouds and the reflection in the water. If this had not been captured do you mean I could have increased the exposure? Sorry for what could be a very simple question. Your help is greatly appreciated.

[pnodrog]

The exposure looks about as good as you could get without using fill flash. As has been done by Travis just reduce the background highlights by cloning. If you do not want to clone them out completely just set the clone transparency to say 10% and the mode to darken to avoid lightening any darker detail.

Once you have the background highlights under your command you can lift the curves to improve the overall tonal range.

I am not sure what editing software you have. The instructions above were based on having photoshop or an editor where the darken mode is available.

P.S. I downloaded it and did a little play and realised Travis had cropped rather than cloned the highlights out. It will all depend on what you want to do. There are many ways to skin a cat in PP - I am sure your dog will be pleased to know that...

[Mike Buckley]

Now that I see your histogram, I agree with Richard that you did quite well with the exposure. This example involving Travis's treatment proves that mastering post-processing techniques can dramatically improve an image beyond what is captured in the camera.

Perhaps at this stage of your learning curve, the most important thing to realize is that your camera displays a histogram and that you should check it immediately after taking any photo or series of similar photos. The information displayed in the histogram will inform you as to whether you should change your camera settings.

Similarly, your camera probably displays another kind of information commonly called "blinkies." The areas of the image that are lit up by the blinkies are the bright tones that are blown. If there are too many blinkies in an important area of the image, you know to reduce the exposure and check the blinkies after retaking the shot.

Last, always keep your eye on the histogram as you do your post-processing. Doing so helps ensure that your edit steps don't cause issues that you hadn't noticed, as the histogram can help bring any such issues to your attention.

[zen]

It's a great first effort, but the brightened, cropped version is much, much better. I like to see the eyes, and the original version hid them pretty effectively.

Thanks for sharing.

Zen

[rpcrowe]

Despite some minor technical faults, the image is quite pleasing and humorous. I would guess that most of us dog folks have seen their dogs like this. My first thought when I saw the image was, "Been there; done that!"

[Mike Buckley]

I would like to put the context of the OP's image in perspective. He began photography in May and posted his image in June. I made exactly one image of comparable quality in my first month of photography using a point-and-shoot camera. To do so using a DSLR as he did is far more difficult. My hat is off to him (if only I was actually wearing one).

[thegman]

Well said Mike, I too have only started photography and Stevie has done very well. It can sometimes be daunting displaying your shots when there is such good quality on display on the forum.

[weemrp]

Thanks for the support folks. It is a daunting prospect putting something up when there is a chance someone may ridicule your effort but there is a great deal of talent in these forums and I want to learn from that. Some of the comments have been really constructive and hopefully they sink in quick enough. I apologise in advance if some of my efforts have been done before but at this stage it's all about learning the basics and giving it a go.

[Mike Buckley]

It is a daunting prospect putting something up when there is a chance someone may ridicule your effort

I realize that you're new here, so hopefully it will be very comforting to learn that I have never seen anyone ridicule a photograph here.

[weemrp]

Yes, it is and this was the reason for posting. I figured it's a learning community and everyone is in the same boat, regardless of experience. Every day is a school day and all that.