So, here are some shots I have taken since buying my DSLR.

My main photo theme seems to be long exposures and evening landscapes.


I am looking for advice and hints from anyone willing to give it, as I am learning and have seen some massively impressive work on here.

Greetings, and welcome. You will receive excellent advice on this forum. The participants are knowledgeable, and generous. There are a few things that I will mention to enhance your time here.
1) Post your image here, some, like myself, do not like going off-site.
2) Post one, maybe two images at a time.
3) Tell the forum whether , or not, they have your permission to rework your images.
4) Be gracious with praise & criticism. Some can be harsher than other, but all mean well.
5) Keep learning, shooting, and having fun.

One other thing I have learned. This is a critique forum. If you have images that you think are presentation level and that you do not seek to improve you may be disappointed.

My policy is to post images to this forum that I am struggling with and need to find ways to improve or perhaps to hear the honest words that the image just does not work or is boring etc.

If I have an image that I think is above average and meets my personal standards I post it to a presentation forum like Landscape.

No image is perfect or will be universally liked. But your own standards are all you can use to determine this.

Cheers Ben and oldrattler, I plan on joining as an uploader shortly, once I do, I will be uploading proper JPEGs rather than linking to low-res renders.

looking forward to it
Scott

You don't need to join uploader to imbed images here in your posts. You simply grab the link from wherever it's hosted, and then just make sure it's around 800 pixels long or wide, at its longest or widest.

Adjusted first post...

The lightning has been touched up, mostly just cooling down the WB, the other one, is cropped only, no editing otherwise.

Please think of these comments as being as neutral as possible, and you'll read them correctly. I'm not the best one to give you any kind of comments, as I have a lot to learn myself, but I don't want you to be left without any feedback for your images. Remember, this is just my opinion, it's certainly different from every other photographer out there, take what you think makes sense and ignore the rest.

I don't find lightning images much compelling, so I won't comment much on the first image except to say that I miss "more information" on the frame, everything is hidden in the extreme darkness, and the silhouettes don't give me much information.

On the second image, you captured a beautiful sky, however I feel it's lacking something of interest on the foreground. Sometimes a good silhouette works; you can google "joshua park silhouettes" (image search) for good examples of what I mean. Obviously silhouettes are not the only way to use such beautiful sky in an image, just one example.

I would also suggest to correct your horizons, your camera seems to be tilted in both captures. You can correct the tilt using post processing software. In the first photo there is a completely black triangle in the upper left corner (roof?) which probably could have been avoided.

Thanks, yea, I have cropped the roof out when sharing the photo on other sites (facebook etc) but wanted as much data to be there as possible on here.

As for levelling out shots, I really need to take more photos when I am not being rushed by people to hurry up so they can eat...

Also, the second one, is actually level, is a range of hills, I did line it up as best I could to match with ground level, it just turns out that the horizon is not level due to it being hilly...

I am hoping to get some nice starry night shots on Saturday (provided the sky is clear enough), so will spend a bit more time lining up everything.

Some of my earlier work, mostly long exposures...





Thanks for the feedback so far, I am looking more for advice on how to take the photos, but am happy to get editing advice too, just I try harder to take a good photo than to make it good with editing.