Photography 56k no-go zone

[brazed]

Ok then. Here are a few. I'm still playing around a bit, so comments are encouraged.
:)

Be kind...gentle...you know...nice...

This was in January when I was in Gordon's Bay, CT. Thought I'd take a quick snap:



This is just a random one, taken when I was sitting with a few friends having a glass of wine:



This was a statue in South Korea that caught my eye:

[onona]

Some nice shots, Brazed. Something you should give some thought to is your composition. Frame your shots in a way that creates an overall image, as opposed to a photo that happens to have something interesting in it, if that makes any sense. Of course, framing your shots perfectly when you take them is somewhat rare; the majority of time, you can simply crop them afterwards in Photoshop to improve the composition. Your black and white shots are nice and crisp, but both could be improved with some cropping and adjustment. A good technique for making "comfortable" composition is to find dominant lines in the image and straighten them to run parallel to the edges of the image - in your last image, you could easily straighten it in such a way that the sides of the statue's base run parallel to the sides of the image, and the bottom of the base runs parallel to the bottom. This helps the compositional flow and also makes the image somehow easier to look at. Another thing to consider is the rule of thirds (google it if you don't know it, it's very basic) - many cameras can superimpose a grid to help you with this golden rule of composition (not that every photo should necessarily follow this rule, but it's one of the most basic rules, easy to learn, and helps to get you thinking about composition in general). I highly recommend a book called The Photographer's Eye by Michael Freeman if you want to read more about composition. Composing your photos thoughtfully takes them from being mere images of objects to being complete images.

[Chainsaw]

I'm a bit of a nut for live music. So I'll just leave these here:

Dan Patlansky


Kobus de Kock


Random drummer whose name escapes me

[onona]

Great shots, Chainsaw :D

[Griff3n]

My sisters boyfriend got a camera and has been taking some good shots.

Let me know what you think and what he can do to improve his work. He is the kind guy that will alway accept some advice :)

His photo stream.

[didnt want to post picture here that i have not taken :P]

[Toxxyc]

OK, so I'm looking at a better camera than I have now (I've got a Nikon L100). The one I have isn't bad, it's just not sufficient anymore. It's a 10 Megapixel point-and-shoot with 15x optical zoom, so it's fine for fun pics, but not for a bit better like I want. I'm thinking of getting me a Nikon D5100 with two lenses in a "kit" kindof composition. Does anyone know of a good website where I can purchase from, as well as give me some experienced info on this camera? I'm a bit of a Nikon fan, so I'd prefer to stay away from Canon and other makes (although Canon also makes excellent cameras, I know). :)

Let me know what you think and what he can do to improve his work. He is the kind guy that will alway accept some advice :)

His photo stream.

Looks good. He should just be careful of over-cropping. The "Butterfly feeding on flower" photo is just a little bit too cropped. The ones with the bees are very pretty though. Colours are insane.

[Chainsaw]

Great shots, Chainsaw :D

Lightroom does wonders ;)

[Cleric]

Those shots are amazing Chainsaw. Would dig to have you shoot some stuff for my band in the future. Are you in JHB?

[Toxxyc]

<lots of tips>

I've seen some very good tips for mostly nature photographs being published monthly in the Afrikaans "Weg!" or English "Go!" magazines. I've learned a lot from them (rule of thirds, different lightings, focuses, movement, etc.) and I'll continue to learn for as long as I'm interested in photography. Onona, just how much do you know about photography? Do you have some kind of history or something?

[Chainsaw]

Those shots are amazing Chainsaw. Would dig to have you shoot some stuff for my band in the future. Are you in JHB?

Sorry mate, I'm down in Cape Town. But if you guys ever head down here, just let me know :P

[onona]

Onona, just how much do you know about photography? Do you have some kind of history or something?

I'm an artist, so it's my business to know about artistic theories and whatnot, but I only got into photography in the last year or so, and am learning new things just about every day.

[Banlam]

I have a Kodak c713 7mp mik and druk camera , and i am a little confused about the whole megapixel think , i have tried on the net but its even more confusing.

I recently took some photos indoors with the camera set on low light at 7 mp with flash on , my photos are grainy and low quality to say the least . Unfortunately i cannot upload due to system admin limitations but would it make a difference if i lowered the megapixels or what settings should i change bearing in mind that i very seldom print my photos . Outside shots are good IMO but inside always come out krap . What am i doing wrong?

Megapixels just refer to the number of pixels in the photo. For example you could refer to a screens resolution in megapixels too. where 1 megapixel is 1 million pixels. Old cellphones and many webcams take images at 640x480 = 307200pixels, or 0.3 Megapixels.

I have an oldish Canon 350D, at its max resolution it takes images at 3456x2304 = 7 962 624 pixels, or 8MP.

The higher the MP rating, the higher the resolution of the photo you take.

The graininess you experienced is most likely due to a high ISO rating. A standard ISO rating would generally be 100 or 200, but in low light conditions cameras will shift that ISO rating much higher, up to 1600 on my camera, but sometimes higher on others. This basically brightens the photo, it allows for a brighter photo at a faster shutter speed, thus less blur.

It's kinda like editing a photo in photoshop, and increasing the brightness. And the methods used can result in a noticeable amount of graininess. Most cameras would keep the ISO lowish though if you were using the flash. But you should be able to check all the settings by viewing the photo properties.

In any case, low light is a photographers worst enemy, in my opinion in any case, it can be used for effect, but in general, not nice.

[Squid]

My brother loves his photography. Some crits would be welcome!

The sunset at Scarborough:


Simonstown, love the colours in this one:


Had to do this move several times without a headlamp. Some nifty fake remote flash trickery here:


A rad shot for the sponsors:


Kneebar!


Pity about the over-exposure, but the light across his face came out nicely:


^^All the above photos are by Duncan Fraser (I think I'm obliged to add that bit).

Being an architect, he also has a bunch of cool shots of buildings, I'll try get hold of some.

Thoughts?

[KalMaverick]

Wow, love the simonstown one. It looks so unreal, something about it just makes me keep looking.

[onona]

Squid, those are nice shots but most of them lack focus, largely due to lighting. These can thankfully be patched up afterwards, since it's very difficult to get perfect lighting in photos when you're out and about. Here's an example using the Simonstown photo. The pic is nice but totally lacks a focal point and while it has some nice tones, it's also a bit monochromatic, which isn't really flattering for a sunset image.



See how a bit of adjustment can help to bring focus to the image? Although the camera's position could have been better in this pic as the composition is a tad cluttered in my most humble of opinions, which is why I decreased the structure of the water to compensate. If you shoot in RAW format, you have loads of scope for adjusting tones and lighting afterwards. Unfortunately I couldn't do much with this as it's a compressed 8bit JPEG while has very little room for adjustment - hence the slightly weird tones of the sky that I couldn't be bothered to fix :P

[Toxxyc]

^ May I ask what you used to do this? I've done similar things with Paint Shop Pro when I was little, but I'd like something more powerful for my future investment (Nikon D5100).

[onona]

I use Aperture on a Mac. Although I made the gif in Photoshop.

[onona]

Come on guys, where are your pics?

I went to Greece last week for a few days and took over 600 photos while I was there. I'm still going through all of them but here's one of my favourites. I took it from the top of a bus in Athens, and I just loved the chaos of the tram and trolleybus lines across the street. The image works much better in black and white than it does in colour, because of all the lines and contrast.



And here's a shot of a wolf that I took in Hungary last year:

[Toxxyc]

<wolf pic>

Wow. Just. Wow. It looks so mystical.

[Toxxyc]

I have an idea: To all of us who like taking pictures and who will be residing in South Africa in Wednesday, 15th June 2011, how about we all try and take a picture of the moon just after 21:00? There are talks about the longest lunar eclipse since 2000, so I'm pretty happy about it. I do only have a cheap camera, but I'll do my best! What do you guys think?

PS: Sorry onona, I know you're not here... :P