Hello. This will be my first post on this forum. There is some amazing skill and talent on this board, and I've already learned a lot just by lurking over the past week.
I am seeking hard critiques of my work. I know that I have a lot of technical knowledge to develop yet and I hope to learn before I invest in more expensive equipment. Right now I'm making do with an early model Canon Digital Rebel, which is frustrating sometimes because of the low megapixel count. I dabbled in photography as a youth, but I sort of put it on the side when I had a family. Now as the kids are getting older I'm finding more time for myself (and hopefully a wee bit more free funds) and hope to pick it back back up again; however, the technology has changed quite a bit over the years and I'm finding myself essentially learning from scratch all over again. It's hard to get better though when people I know only tell me how much they like my pictures; they don't give me the critiques I need to make them better, and I know that they could be better. So please, let me know what I'm doing right and what I am doing wrong.
Hello and welcome.
I am still learning too, but I feel I have gotten a pretty good handle on macro photography compared to most folks. That said, here would be my hard critiques:
1. Too dark. Your subject (the boat) is partially-hidden by bushes and is in the background. Telephone lines in the photo detract from a "sea/boat" shot in general, and they clash with the rigging of the boat in particular. The greatest amount of space in the photo is taken-up by dull, dark, uninteresting bushes that have nothing to do with your subject and aren't attractive enough to warrant that kind of dominance in the photo.
2. Too dark in some areas + highlights/detail lost in others. Soft focus + you clipped both the top
and the bottom of the flower in your composition, and yet did not capture enough detail of the subject to warrant a close-up. Utterly common "snapshot" background with no bokeh.
3. I like #3 a lot but looks a bit bright to me. Would have been a better shot if taken in the morning light (looks to be taken in the mid-afternoon light, which is the harshest light of all). It is still a good composition though, with nice details in the sand dune.
4. Too dark. Yellow cast looks like you again took the shot in mid-day rather than early morning light. Utterly common background with
way too many distracting elements. Foreground flower is clipped, mid-range (subject) flower is clipped, with only the background flower captured in whole (and it is both blurred as well as having 2-dozen distracting leaves, stems, etc. sprouting all about it).
I am not much of a landscape photographer, so I can't give you a lot of pointers there, but your macro work needs to have more attention paid to
isolating the subject by selectively composing your shots with 1)
better backgrounds in mind and 2) taking them at
a time of day where the light is most pleasing rather than more harsh. I also strongly disagree with the f/22 suggestion. With a little Rebel you will start seeing diffraction past f/11, not to mention you can kiss any chance of achieving a pleasing bokeh goodbye. I do, however, agree with the tripod and remote statement, using mirror lock-up/live view.
Most importanly, I would get a longer macro lens first, and then keep your f/stop between f/4 and f/9, and you will see a dramatic improvement in your presentations.
Good luck,
Jack
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