stephen_lau1

The saturated green door and its brick surrounding look nice. Since probably you used the 28mm end of your lens and the camera was not level, there are lots of distortion in this shot. Sometimes intentional distortion may be desirable. But in this case the door seems to tilting to the left, which can be corrected with your editing program (but the images does suffer a loss of quality). I also find the hot highlight to the left of the brick wall distraction and taking my attention away from the nice door and the brick wall. I have done some distrotion correction and some cropping of this image for your consideration.

The Fuji NPH400 was my all time favorite color film before I started shooting digital. The scene was quite peaceful and moody. One question: is the Mamiya6 a 6X6 format?

 

I can see some vignetting at the upper corners, which may be due to the lens hood, or just light fall-off at the corners if the lens. This shot might take advantage of a graduate filter to get a better light balance between the bright sky and dark foreground, assuming the negative does not retain all the details in the sky. If it does, it may be just a scanning issue which can be resolved by: scanning the same negative twice, one set for the sky and one set for the foreground, and then combine the image with your editing program. It does not bother me as much as may be others with the horizon right in the middle of the frame, but usually you may receive some negative feedback from doing so.

 

You may not be aware that we have our Feb assignment ongoing: the title is "Door". Hope to see more of your shots and participaction in the circle.

In order to be a good photographer, he/she has to meet two basic requirements: able to 'see' the picture and the ability to 'make' the picture. Someone is more gifted than the other. I once met a lady whose pictures blew my mind off, but she has absolutely no idea how a camera works - she just used the auto mode and let her creatitivity took over, and the new generation of cameras take the technical burden off her.

 

Yes, the color is not exactly right in this image, but I can see the rapid progress in your visualization. You have demonstrated that you can 'see' better than your first few images in this Circle. My suggestions: keep your equipment to a minimum unless you really neeeds them to take a picture, as they will stand in your way of creativity. Keep on shooting and enjoy it.

Very nice color and composition. The color in the shade is always cool and blue, especially during early morning and later afternoon. Remember my blue snow in the duck images? I agree with Fred about the lack of details in the foreground is not a problem at all in this shot. The mix of warm and cool color is always appealing.

This is an interesting image. Yes, it is a bit too busy. It does have an abstract look and feel. I have tried to use some PS filters to see if I could enhance this image but no luck.

I think that is my duck!! Pretty nice capture. I was told by a very good bird photographer to shoot birds at their eye level, just like coming down to children's level before pressing the shutter. Actually I was told that a lot of bird photographers spend half of the time on their tummies with a modified ground tripod!!

It is always like to see the power and muscle of a horse. The exposure and color is very nice. If you can select some simpler background, the horse will stand out a lot more.

As long as you, the photographer, still enjoy shooting this kind of scene, go for it. Isn't it all about photography for us...fun & enjoyment? Keep on shooting is the most important part.

The color is nice. The contrast is too high for my liking. In scene like this, usually I don't mind blown out highlight like the street light, but the ground is also over-exposed too in this image. I would suggest to burn down the ground and see if it looks better. If there is some headroom for the lights, the image would not look so tight.

I also like to crop off the blue sky. The deep blue really takes too much attention away from the beautiful landscape. If I have to make a choice, I will pick you second posted image over the first.

It is good to see that you were rewarded with this wonderful light show. I actually like the subtle skyline and dark cloud, which add to the blue sky and bloody red cloud and the mood of this shot. I cannot see anything that needs changing in here. Have you tried to print this image?

I have seen the Canada Geese sleep like this (one foot) all the time. But, I did not notice that they changed foot. May be I have not stayed long enough to see they change feet? The pose and reflection are nice. I do think the cropping is too tight for my taste.

I like the sepia toning of this shot and the composition is very nice. There are lots of interesting elements to look at. I usually like high contrast BW myself, but for some moody images like this one, I think the mood comes first and the contrast should covey the mood instead of destroying the mood. Contrast is as subjective in BW images as color saturation in color images. There is no right or wrong, better or worse, but just personal preference in most cases. I think this is another good example that coverting a (otherwise boring) color image into BW and MAKE the image works.

Lady seemed to have find her spot!! I can't help but notice most of your shots with your digital camera appear a bit on the soft side. I am not sure if it is your camera or something else. Have you tried to take a shot of a newspaper with the camera on a tripod (or sitting on a table with self timer) and use smaller aperture (to ensure sufficient DOF) and see if the image is a lot sharper than your usual shots? USM can help to improve the appearance sharpness but starting with a sharp image can make life a lot easier.

 

Looking at this particular shot, the sharpenss is at the ears of Lady. For most portrait, the sharpness should be at the eyes, and with sufficient DOF to cover the nose. If your camera allows, try to focus lock on the eye (commonly you can do that with the shutter button half pressed) and then recompose to take the shot. Have fun.

This sepia version is so much better than the 'original'. The sepia tone gives the old bridge the character it deserves and makes this image into something more interesting. I used to shoot color early in the morning when the color was at its prime and changed over to shoot BW when the color became less dramatic. On overcast days, BW shots can pull out more punches than color most of the time.

You got the new 24-70 lens too ? You must be a very good boy. Fred, there is wonderful color in the sky. I can image how much better this shot would be without so many trees in the foreground. Some of them have to go.

Fred, are you home yet? You could have been home from judging the number of postings you have. Hope you have a nice holiday and enjoy the warm weather. Talking about weather, we started having snow since yesterday and have accumlation over 10" by now. Luckily temperature is still up around -10 deg C. It would be nice to have snow a few days earlier for a white Xmas instead of brown.

 

From viewing your comments, I have come up an idea. How about we start posting some 'bad' images amd tell others why and how we made that mistakes? We can always learn from the 'bad' images or other's mistakes, as much as if not more from other's good images. I don't know about you, but I have tones of 'bad' ones .

I find this shot is too contrast for my taste. Sometimes the darmatic lighting works good but I don't think this is the type of shot. Is the original print/negative so contrast or it is the result of the scanning?

May be you can have the best of both worlds by combining the shots with and without flash. I tried in PS to combine the images as layers and get the effect I like by adjusting the opacity of one layer. I did not do a very good job as the shots are not exactly the same size and there was camera movement in between shots. But, it should give you some idea what the combined image looks like.

Very interesting shot. The lighting and the subjects remind me of some type of religious ceremony instead of a balloon shot. The shot looks so 'clean. Did you shoot at ISO100 or 200?

This is a beautiful shot with so much clarity from the 6X9 scan. I haven't been using my 690 for years now. Seeing your shot makes me start thinking about using the 690 again. May be I will do some real film shooting with my medium format and the 690 around Xmas time. Thank for for the inspiration.

Lisa, the XD11 is a very good camera. I have two XD11 bodies which are still working nicely after 17 years. I love shooting water, whether it is moving or not. There is no formula for a 'good' water shot. But, the appearance of the shot depends on a lot of the shutter speed you use to take the shot. Sometimes, the 'best' shot is to freeze the water motion to see every bit details by using high shutter speed. But other times, you want to blur the water using slower shutter speed, and you have to experience various shutter speed to achieve the most appealing effect. Even with very experienced photographers, the final effect is tough to pre-visualize. That is why most will take a series of shots with different shutter speeds and decide on which one is the 'best' later. You have already given very good advises how to using slow speed. All I am going to add is to get a good tripod, solid but light enough to carry.

Where can you find a better way to refresh and relax like taking shot like this? I don't have problem with the composition. Some may pay more attention at the rule of third, but I think the 50/50 split works in this quiet and balanced shot. The color does not look overly saturated for me. The contrast is nice. Work done!!!

As you are shooting digital, you can easily setup some home made light instead of using the on-board flash. All you need is couple of desk lamps and some reflectors to get very interesting effect. It is fun and a learning process to do the 'hot' light photography and the result is a lot more predictable and rewarding too.

Now, this is bribery. If you are going to feed the bird, please feed him some high quality food instead of cold pizza!!! This is the kind of image quality I expected from the 100-400 lens. The background is very pleasing with the lens.