Evening walk.

We went for a walk this evening, so I took my camera; just in case.
I tried to bear in mind everything you guys have told me, and looked at things from different angles. Even looked at things I would have ordinarily walked past.

Most of what I shot will get deleted

But, I liked this one.
So; C&C please, am I learning?

Father

I would have tried to get in closer to bring out some detail of the tree rings , the grain. I dont think the grass adds to the picture.... colours are nice.

ps. I delete most of my shots too.

Mmm, fair point. Should have thought of that.

I agree. But the DoF was as small as I could make it. Is there a way in Paintshop to blur a background. When I tried, I could blur the whole image, but couldn't select an area

I dont know about Paintshop but it can be done easily in Photoshop Elements which is what I use. But I have stepped back from doing severe editing of an image. In this example you will find it difficult to select the background from the foreground without it being noticable, as there is not a clear boundary between the two.

I leave it alone, then.
I suppose if I'd have got close enough to get the grain, it would have solved this problem too. But I did like the layout with the log and the chopped bits.

I agree with Peter about the grass, the subject matter is nice - lovely colours, just some more texture needed?

Vic.

PS If I shoot 50 pictures and get 2 or 3 reasonable ones I think I'm doing well .....

That brings me to something I was thinking of starting in another thread.

What do you guys do with the "unused" pics?
Do you delete them from the SD card / computer, or keep them just in case they become useful in future?

As my poor ones really are bad, I've been permanently deleting them.

I delete them from the SD card and the hard drive. Which is why I have always seem to have enough room on the SD card.

Howard

If a picture is not up to scratch .......bin it for good.

Its like looking in the garage and finding all those things you never threw away because they "would come in handy some day"..... right !

I suppose it depends how bad they are, most of my bad ones are due to blurring/focus!? - I don't have any fast lenses and don't go above 400 ISO so I'm often pushing the limits especially with moving subjects* I'm not deleting much at the moment though unless I'm sure they will never be used. Storage is cheap but I should be deleting more stuff really

Vic.

* see my post "Long Legs" they were on the move and I had to "track" them (Pan) in some cases!

Well you're getting there Ted - you are spotting interesting things - I like this and would have tried it myself. Not a lot you can do about the grass really. A bit tighter in would have helped maybe, but as you say the chips around the log. Maybe you could have got down lower and taken it?

As to duff photos, unless they are truly duff and unsaveable - eg out of focus, severe lens flare, bird flies away, I tend to keep them. I learn a lot by looking back at photos and thinking about what I did wrong and how I should have done it. I am not someone who shoots hundreds of photos just to get one good one, I try and make every one a good one and take fewer photos as a result, but have more keepers. Of the photos I took on holiday some were just holiday snaps, but those I really wanted to get right all turned out as I wanted them, except the condors - and that was cos I didn't have the Bigma with me. However when I was starting out I took stacks of awful photos, and I still have them - just to remind me of what not to do!

Take a breath and walk around a subject, look at it from different angles, high, low, think about it - then reach for the camera. One of the biggest mistakes people make is not getting close enough to their subject.
On a course I did we had to take 15 photos of an object of our choice, using the kit lens at it's widest. I chose a new garden chair we'd just bought and ended up with over 30 photos of it from all angle, some from far away, some so close as to be almost abstract. It is a great exercise and teaches you to look at things differently and not be afraid to get up close and personal!

You're right about getting close.
I was on hands and knees here trying to look through the viewfinder.

I learned that a few weeks ago after my entry for Decay and Dereliction. I went back and really got close, and enjoyed the process more.

unless you are planning on doing some experiments with computer editing (ie photoshopping) be ruthless when editing, in camera, before it get to the computer.

if you are planning to play in photoshop....
you could take a so-so shot and really get wild with it.

that shot above, for example, (as it sits, it's no masterpeice, but exposure, focus, rule of thirds, not too bad, the light is a little flat, I'd revisit that spot early in the morning/late in the evening after a rain, with better light, and you will be pleased with the results) I'd paste in a door and windows on that log, add my kids playing on the woodchips (about two inches tall in scale), with our cat creeping up behind in the grass.

a little dodging and burning, and put on our wall.