JimFox
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 p.1 #7 · Beginner Seeking Advice... | |
Hey Mark,
Welcome to FM, and I think you are doing a good job by focusing on the composition at this point. That little Nikon seems to be doing a pretty good job too for you. I certainly would upgrade as soon as I could if I were you. For the quality of most of these, you would certainly want to have Raw files worth using in the future.
Overall, all of your compositions are great. Paul made a good suggestion about getting some books by the masters, and really trying to figure out what they did and why it worked, though you are definately on the right path already. And I also agree with Barry, where most of these are at now is some good post-processing work. Do you have Photoshop? If not, get it. If you are still a student, you can get a student version of CS3 for about $300.
Okay, a couple of suggestions and things to watch for. You do seem to be aware of the rule of thirds, as most of your shots seem to fall into this. One thing to watch for is small bit's of things poking into the edges of the shot.
Like #6 is a nice composition, but at the very bottom, there is just the tip of two rocks poking into the frame. That will be visually distracting and the eye will keep going to that, rather then follow the flow of your shot. Sometimes that is unavoidable, so if it can't be cropped out, then simple clone something like that out in Photoshop.
In #9, I love the glow you got in that, and the reflection, but having the top of that one tree in the bottom of the frame, that again distracts, even though it isn't just barely in the shot, singular items that appear to be so much closer, they don't seem to be really apart of the shot, and so distracts. I would have gotten closer and then shot. I like how you tried to fill the space in the reflection with it and balance the shot. That was good, but to make it work you would have needed to include the foreground shoreline and the rest of the tree. Atleast in my opinion...
I really like what you were doing in #4 shooting Yosemite Falls like that. I like how you got that grass line in it. But notice the peak in the grasses is dead center, and then Yosemite falls is off center? Staying exactly where you were shooting this, I would have simply rotated your point of focus a bit more and had the grass center point and the waterfall split the center of the frame.
Are you using a tripod? I agree with Steve, make sure you get a circular Polarizer and some grad ND filters and holder. The other option with the tripod is to make sure you bracket some of those shots, especially the reflection shots.
Anyway, great work here really! Keep it up!
Jim
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Thanks for that!