first photos

[Simone simone]

Hi All,

Am very new to DSLR - have a new sony alpha 33 - and look forward to learning as much from you all as I can - this site has so much advice and support Have posted a couple of my first attempts and welcome any comments and look forward to improving on these - Thanks and Cheers Jane

[Peter Ryan]

Hi Jane and welcome to CiC,

Just out of interest whereabouts in Oz are you? Given Rainbow Lorikeets, prawns and beer I am guessing Qld or NT - somewhere north anyway.

I like shallow DOF to highlight the subject so both works well for me. I do like Lorikeets and they move so fast they are often hard to position in the frame. I would have liked the birds centred more but you could crop the shot to achieve this.

# 2 is a good fun shot and the colour is great. I want to hoe right in. The prawns are the subject and the viewer expects them to be sharp and inviting. It looks like you focused on the prawn tail in the middle at the back. This leaves the shot a bit soft in the front for my liking. The light on the beer draws you in and adds depth. I like the placement of the items on the shot.

The only other thing would be to clone out the bit of the bottle on the left. Your viewfinder often shows only 92%, or thereabouts, of the image (check your manual for the exact percentage) and you can be surprised when you process it that other bits jump in from nowhere.

Well done and keep posting.

[Simone simone]

Thanks for your advice Peter - it is very helpful to know what others see when looking at photographs - I agree the prawns are not as sharp as they could be and will also look into cloning (?) to remove the bottle on the left as you suggested. I was on holidays at the South Coast at the time and the prawns were good Thanks again Jane

[tihsgod]

Hi Jane, most things look better facing into photos... people, animals but even boats and cars... so in shot 1 you could have framed with the right hand bird at the far right of the frame... then of course you have the whole plate in shot which should be better also...

beer and shrimps is a great subject and I think Peters comments are spot on...

I think when you first start shooting do not frame too tight... frame large (leave a lot of space) and crop down on the computer afterwards... that lets you play with the composition and also learn about composition. later you can start to frame tighter with the camera... if you give yourself room to play there are different ways to cut and dice photos... neil

[Dave Humphries]

Good call on this crop Neil

Jane, for a good final result; you would (I suggest) just need to tone down the blown background highlights now.

[Henrik]

Hi,
In the case of the parrots I think you must concentrate on the most interesting one in order to get a balanced picture. I cropped so the eye is rigt in the center of a 1/3 crossing, desaturated a little bit, darkened here and there and added sharpness to the bird's head. You may find it drastically, but the other one seemed a bit distracted.
Regards, Henrik

[Skitalez]

Good call on this crop Neil

Jane, for a good final result; you would (I suggest) just need to tone down the blown background highlights now.

I think, this picture not proper! Main here beer)))))
Confuses that I look it hungry

[Simone simone]

Thanks for all your advice - it gives me good direction of what to concentrate on and need to learn more about - Neil on giving myself more room then cropping later and face on ; Dave on toning down highlights in background Henrik thanks for the excellent example and yegor needs to eat or grab himself a beer I think I do nothave any software yet - can I crop and tone without it or can you let me know what is best eg : everyone seems to mention photoshop. Thanks again for taking the time to comment

[Peter Ryan]

Hi Jane,

Yes you will need some form of software to get to the next level of output.

The top of the range is Photoshop CS5 followed by Photoshop Elements (I think Version 8 at the moment). CS5 includes many features for graphic artists that photographers do not use, so PSE has basically taken all the photographic elements out of Photoshop CS5 and put it in one place. I use CS4 and have not used Elements so others might like to tighten up my assessment in relation to these two.

From a freebie point of view some here use GIMP, which I have looked at but not used a lot. This takes a bit of getting sued to. I have looked more closely at Photoplus (a serfi pdoduct), which I like as a photographers tool and has an excellent on screen help for all functions to get you started. This is very good when you start as you always forget the moves. I like this product so much I am about to start teaching a one day workshop on it during the winter months. It looks and feel like CS5 so when you are ready to upgrade you will not be disadvantaged trying to learn something new.

A good freebie for RAW processing is Rawtherapee and when converted you can then one of the others for any other processing.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Jane,

I started 'mainstream' image editing with Elements and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, after using version 6 on an older computer - rather than tranfer, I got version 8 mid-way through 2010 (then 9 came out, but it's now great difference).

As Peter says, it does (much of) the useful stuff photographers need - for one tenth the (full) CS5 price.

I do now have CS5, I was, in an Adobe UK deal, offered CS5 half price as I had registered Elements 8 and it was too good a deal to miss. I had turned it down earlier when I was at your stage, but now have 'taken the plunge' up to the next level

Cheers,

[Simone simone]

Thanks Paul and Dave - good to know when as I look around

[Simone simone]

Hi, I have not posted for a while. I now have photoshop and premier elements 11 and am finding this next step a real challenge. I am trying to colour the browned edges of flower petals a similiar shade - is this possible with this software ? Am I missing something? Could someone advise how I can do this ? Thanks . My mother will smack me for putting her image "out there " so please do not forward further. Thanks This is the Jpeg I could not tinypic the RAW as kept saying invalid file. still so much to understand

[Simone simone]

Re: first photos
Hi, I have not posted for a while. I now have photoshop and premier elements 11 and am finding this next step a real challenge. I am trying to colour the browned edges of flower petals a similiar shade - is this possible with this software ? Am I missing something? Could someone advise how I can do this ? Thanks . My mother will smack me for putting her image "out there " so please do not forward further. Thanks This is the Jpeg I could not tinypic the RAW as kept saying invalid file. still so much to understand .....