Playing around with older pics still. I get my point-n-shoot on Friday (Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ10). I have longer to wait to get my replacement focus screen for my 20D then I take it in to ye olde camera shoppe to get it installed. I hate being camera-less!
Anyway, this was from back in December of last year.
EDIT: Did I pot this before in a previous thread? I might have... crap - if so, sorry for the repost.
pope: Is there any way you can recrop to keep the shallow curve of the pavement on the frame all the way to the right? I like the shot, but I think that would improve it.
I really like those shots Penpal. Especially the really smoky ones. A couple of them are pretty noisy, so you might look into reducing that. Could I trouble you to write a bit about your process for getting these night portraits?
I've been shooting in this little nook in our house here with an old vintage lamp and a nice black desk to reflect off of. A very first attempt to actually affect the lighting situation instead of just going with whatever is present.
I've been surprised to read that some of the local pros here rely pretty heavily on Lightroom for at least part of their process. Good to know, since I just got started with it myself.
Penpal: I like the 3rd shot and last shot, but dear jesus those have a lot of annoying noise. If the choices are noise or blurry I would go with noise but if you could avoid that too then I would try that. Also it might be useful to try and kill it in post with noise ninja or something of that nature. On the last shot, I really like the DOF with the grass in the foreground and how the light falls on it so it stands out quite a bit.
The first one the overexposed light is distracting and the smoke just makes the picture look soft/muddy rather than looking "cool". The second one I don't like the abrupt line of light that falls on the guys arm/back and the cig is blending in with the house behind it. The 4th picture has the exact same problems as the first one. The hand picture just seems out of place since it looks like you posted a series, but I do like the light above the hand on the door.
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
I've been shooting in this little nook in our house here with an old vintage lamp and a nice black desk to reflect off of. A very first attempt to actually affect the lighting situation instead of just going with whatever is present.
I've been shooting in this little nook in our house here with an old vintage lamp and a nice black desk to reflect off of. A very first attempt to actually affect the lighting situation instead of just going with whatever is present.
Whiiiiiiite Balaaaaaaaaance!
Haha simmer down now. Eh, I'm not always a fan of making something pure white that was not pure white when it was shot. Like last weekend I was out in the desert at sunset and everything had an orangy-red glow to it. I brought the glow down some, but it didn't seem right to remove it completely. I am aware that opinions will obviously differ and that mine may be the less popular opinion. Maybe in a week or a month or a year I will switch over to the other team .
Edit: I'll look at these again tonight and take your suggestion into consideration.
Well, you're doing product still life photos with an incandescent bulb and there's no background or sense of atmosphere so it doesn't make sense to keep the orange shift. Maybe if you showed us the lamp and the rest of the desk and maybe part of the room we would have a sense of atmosphere and it would warrant preserving the light temperature. Landscapes colored by late afternoon or early morning light are a totally different story.
I'm glad my write-up came out alright. I can never tell when I write things like that whether they're going to express what I'm trying to say.
Any of you guys that are willing to spend the cash to come up here can definitely crash on my couch. Of course, let me know when you're coming. If you're all coming at the same time then I'll probably have to get a few more couches. Bring warm clothes, warm sleeping bags, a decent thermarest self-inflating sleeping pad, and your own snow shoes or alpine skis. My other pair of snow shoes is unusable so I don't have any spares.
Believe it or not, photography is probably the last thing you're thinking about while sleeping in the snow. You're usually thinking about how terrible sleeping in the snow is and questioning why you decided it would be a good idea. A few months later though, you kind of forget that it sucked as much as it did. It helps if you're looking at the photos you took, though.
As far as my bracketing technique:
There are two ways that I have done it in the past. One, you can use the autobracket function of your camera. I don't like doing it that way, but others may have more success selecting several stops and autobracketing. I usually set up a shot in aperture priority with spot metering. I meter as near to the horizon as I can to try and balance for the sky. I take the shot using that metering and then check my exposure first with the preview. If it looks to be about what I'm going for then I bring up the histogram and see if the highlights and the shadows are within the dynamic range of the capture. If they are then I reevaluate the preview and decide whether I can make a better shot by either exposing for better tones in the sky, or for pulling better exposure out of the foreground. If I think that I need to adjust the exposure I switch back into manual and typically adjust my shutter speed by under 1/3 stop. If I have the time I'll check the preview again. If I don't have time then I will shoot, adjust shutter speed, shoot, adjust the shutter speed and do this a few more times in both directions from the original exposure.
I rarely ever blend exposures, but oftentimes I like having a few similar exposures to play with later on. As much as I understand what playing with a shot later in Lightroom will do, I will oftentimes have to switch up what I was planning on doing and, like shooting in RAW or NEF at 14-bit, having similar exposures provides me with a little more head room and, in a way, an artificially more forgiving dynamic range.
I was thinking the vintage products felt better in the orange than a clean crisp white, but I do see your point. I'll give it some more thought. Thanks salti!
pinch: might want to move the tea box a little further away next time you shoot something reflective like the paint tin. I think you'd get away with the warmth of the image more without that tint.
I was thinking the vintage products felt better in the orange than a clean crisp white, but I do see your point. I'll give it some more thought. Thanks salti!
I second the white balance suggestion. I wouldn't call that oatmeal "vintage" as my roommate bought that exact brand and it sitting in our kitchen.
Also, rreeefffffllllleeeeccctttooorrrrr. Just use some white paper or something on the right side to fill in some of that shadow. Product shots don't often have much shadow in them especially on the main part of the lablel. You might want to also consider doing some sort of seamless setup with some paper or thin poster board.
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
Pinch - I agree with the others regarding the yellowish tinting / white-balance issue. I have a couple other crits as well.
1) the background's texture is just blurry enough to be unpleasant for me to look at (and presumably others). I would either drape some sort of fabric for a backdrop or else blur the background further. You can do that by moving your setup further from the wall, using a smaller aperture, moving the camera closer to the product, or (this is a less good option) by using photoshop. Honestly I don't find the horizontal 2-tone background (table and then wall / dark and then light) to be very interesting, so I would gravitate towards an alternate background altogether (ie - my fabric suggestion, however possibly having a kitchen "scene" out of focus behind the shot could work).
2) Head-on product shots are pretty simplistic and not ultimately super-compelling. While I approve of your clean, simple composition in general, I feel like experimenting with camera angle, adding other objects, creative lighting, etc might punch up the images in general. As art these don't do much for me, as advertisement they still don't do much for me. Your execution is good (with the possible exception of your light-color) and your leaning towards simple and bold is good, but I think you could push future images. I think that would be a good direction to try to improve in: interesting composition. (I constantly need to work on that myself, so please don't think I am being preachy).
If you want, I'll try to dig up my links tonight on my computer at home of some arty product photographers whose work I think really pushes into aesthetics and art. I find them pretty inspiring although I don't really shoot product/still-lifes like this. Lemme know if you're interested.
EDIT: Jake, you have some amazing tonality in your grays. Excellent! Very clean image (except for the finger-splint).
If you want, I'll try to dig up my links tonight on my computer at home of some arty product photographers whose work I think really pushes into aesthetics and art. I find them pretty inspiring although I don't really shoot product/still-lifes like this. Lemme know if you're interested.
I'm interested in seeing said photographers work.
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
I really appreciate the crits guys. I'm still WAY in the beginning of the learning curve, so every little pointer is helpful. I doubt I'll ever dream of becoming a product photographer, but I'd be interested in those links anyway.
I'll go over my workflow tomorrow!
Or tonight if I have time.
I think everyone should go over there workflow, and probably have them all consolidated in the first post! That would be cool, because we can be like "Kevin (penpal) uses a lot of post processing, and this is what he does"
In a slightly different vein is http://www.lincolnbarbour.com, this guy does travel, food, and architecture. He's not as polished/sophisticated as the others, but I do like his stuff.
Pinch, I actually dig the color of your backgrounds, foregrounds , but the actual products would look better with proper white balance. So I wouldnt color correct the whole picture.
Made another picture of a flower, but I might have made it a bit too crunchy. Opinions?
I saw some cool stuff in a field driving home from work so I went back out to take some pictures. Sadly it didn't look as cool as it did when I was driving by at 70mph but I still got some decent photos:
CommunistCow on
No, I am not really communist. Yes, it is weird that I use this name.
Cow: I really like the first. The other two are a bit meh. If the two tall blades in the centre of the last didn't clip the cloud edge but went across the outline, or stayed within it, the comp would be stronger.
Muninn: I like both, although I think the second could use a square crop.
pope: thanks, the splint is actually my favourite thing about it!
Muninn: Whenever I point my camera toward a flower I think about how you would shoot it! Nonetheless...the first is a bit too crunchy for me. The petals look like Sun Chips. Can you pull a hair more detail into the center white part? It's hard to tell what's going on in there. The colors in the second are pretty great. If the noise in the background was caused by your sharpening technique, I'd consider using a mask to exclude the background from being sharpened and, thus, noised up.
Cow: The sky in your first shot is my favorite part. Are you perhaps pulling up a Clarity setting or something that is causing your blacks to muddy up in that wooden post? Maybe it's just slightly out of focus. Something about it is really bothering me. Overall they kind of give the impression that you were losing sunlight and were forced to bring out your flash. Like I want it to either be daylight, or dusk, but it looks like an odd combination.
Munnin - on the first one I have two complaints: (1) the harshness is not something I enjoy. It's subjective, and there will be people who enjoy it so take that with a grain of salt. (2) the out of focus leaves/whatever are really noticeable and distracting. They don't contribute to the composition. I would recommend making a new layer and setting its opacity to something-less-than-100 and then painting a darker gray over them to dull them and get them to fall into the background further.
On the other flower shot, I agree about the colors. The graininess doesn't bother me much, but the image overall doesn't totally grip me. The stem (or grass?) on the right of the flower, it's beige, kinda anchors my eye in that corner and has nothing good to offer me as a viewer. the vertical-ness of the flower doesn't really do anything interesting with the horizontal shot. You might look at a vertical crop to remove the beige thing and to make the photo itself follow the same direction as the flower.
CommieC - I like your treatments and colors a lot! #1 works for me, but I want a little more DOF. The closest (largest) blooms look a little soft to me. In #2 the lack of focus on the post hurts it some, and the overall composition is a little uninteresting. In #3 again i want more DOF to include all of the dominant grass (the big stalks) and the intersection Jake pointed out bugs me as well.
But these are all little, and the pictures are very attractive in general!
It's been a long while since I've had time to go out and take photos. Here are a few I've taken most recently.
I worked at a summer camp between May and August. In early June we found a litter of kittens in our compost, and of course they were cute. We convinced our executive director to give us four weeks to raise them and find them homes. Which we did. So here are a few pictures of them. When I took these, I was trying to go for more than just "awww cute kittens!" so hopefully I was able to do that.
The dining hall at the camp
And the dining hall at night time
Someone donated a coyote carcass to my boss, so she left it in the woods for several months for it to rot, then when it was mostly bones we boiled it.
Night time around a camp fire, singing songs.
And for a different set of pictures:
I joined the Peace Corps this past August, and I am living in the beautiful Island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. I've been here for one month now, and unfortunately do not have my DSLR (It was too big to bring with, since I was only allowed 80 pounds of luggage for my two years here.). Instead I've been doing what I can with my point and shoot, which is frustrating because I don't have much control over it like the DSLR. Hopefully in the next month or so I'll be able to have my other camera shipped down here.
This shot is of an Anglican Church outside of my community, along the Atlantic Ocean. In three weeks I'll be moving into a house almost right next to it.
A view of Frigate Bay from the penninsula.
It's been a while since I've shot, so I'm a bit rusty. I would love some crits though!
first real shoot with lighting
oh em geee I want to sleeeep
I have work at 6 am. I know the highlights are blown on the far right but I felt having the range from complete white, to pretty dark, to the reds and the greens looked nice. Model was my little sis.
pinchloaf: Thanks! The more I look at the BW flower the more i dislike it. I think i will go with my original gut reaction and smooth it out a bit, as it looks very one-dimensional at the moment. The center of the flower is pretty featureless to begin with, and the only improvement i could add is a better contrast/separation between the little pollen... thingies (initially meant to do it but I got lazy and distracted). As for the noise in the color picture, its a mixture of iso, color tweaking and sharpening, and it is definitely reducible, but I just haven't really noticed it until you have pointed it out.
Pope:
I am pretty retarded when it comes to certain things, and leaving "out of depth" elements in the frame is one of those things. Each time I think that those elements add more depth and complexity to the picture, and leave/incorporate them in the final frame. Then you guys tell me to get rid of them, I do, and by god the picture looks 100% better. You guys have to keep beating it out of me until I learn my lesson.
Another thing I absolutely adore is lots of negative space within a long, thin, horizontal frame. Something about the way the eye drifts though a sea of color before encountering the pivotal element really pulls at my mojo. In the case of the color picture I chickened out, and did not include as much space to the left of the frame as I wanted, which would really tickle me silly. But then again a vertical crop really does make for a much stronger picture. I will have to either make this personal aesthetic of mine work better for me, or get rid of it.
commiecow: I agree with others in that the first photo is the strongest in the series. Gorgeous colors.
Spacerobot: I really dig your last shot. You could probably tweak the colors and the saturation a bit in the sky, and bump up the exposure in the foreground to tease out more detail out of the bottom third of the frame.
penpal: Your sister is quite good at modeling. Is she single? :winky: ...I jest, please don't kill me.
Great pictures, minus the blown highlights. My only comments would be adding maybe a little bit harsher light to the "dark side of the face" in the first photo, to bring out a bit more detail and contrast, as her skin looks incredibly uniform, and there aren't many points of reference, especially around the cheekbone. Another thing would be doing some sharpening around the eyes, and and that photoshop magic that the Cosmo photographers do to make the eyes "pop". But I would take my comments with a mountain of salt, as I cant say I am terribly experienced in this type of photography. All I know I really dig these pictures
Seems like a lot of noise in your pics, but I think I remember you saying you're using a P&S? Also, try to avoid midday sunlight if you can, the composition in a few of these are good, but later in the day (or a lot earlier) would probably give better results.
Penpal: I really like the first and second to last, great backgrounds on both. [strike]Only thing I'd suggest is they seem a little hot [/strike](wups didn't see you mention that in your post haha). I'd like the last one a bit more if her back eye was in focus instead of her hair and barely noticeable front eye I think.
Also, try to avoid midday sunlight if you can, the composition in a few of these are good, but later in the day (or a lot earlier) would probably give better results.
I would have liked to have stayed around the garden longer, but I needed to go to work not long after. Plus I was with a group of friends, and they wanted to move on. These were taken around 2:00 - 3:00.
Posts
Anyway, this was from back in December of last year.
EDIT: Did I pot this before in a previous thread? I might have... crap - if so, sorry for the repost.
My Website | My "photo-a-day" 2010
pope: Is there any way you can recrop to keep the shallow curve of the pavement on the frame all the way to the right? I like the shot, but I think that would improve it.
BACK FROM SCHOOL
eat em up
I've been shooting in this little nook in our house here with an old vintage lamp and a nice black desk to reflect off of. A very first attempt to actually affect the lighting situation instead of just going with whatever is present.
I've been surprised to read that some of the local pros here rely pretty heavily on Lightroom for at least part of their process. Good to know, since I just got started with it myself.
The first one the overexposed light is distracting and the smoke just makes the picture look soft/muddy rather than looking "cool". The second one I don't like the abrupt line of light that falls on the guys arm/back and the cig is blending in with the house behind it. The 4th picture has the exact same problems as the first one. The hand picture just seems out of place since it looks like you posted a series, but I do like the light above the hand on the door.
I saw this wicked shot over at strobist:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Bf48JKOl5HQ/Spv1ZTocm-I/AAAAAAAABYA/fvRwaAdYECE/s1600-h/shuttle.jpg
Whiiiiiiite Balaaaaaaaaance!
Haha simmer down now. Eh, I'm not always a fan of making something pure white that was not pure white when it was shot. Like last weekend I was out in the desert at sunset and everything had an orangy-red glow to it. I brought the glow down some, but it didn't seem right to remove it completely. I am aware that opinions will obviously differ and that mine may be the less popular opinion. Maybe in a week or a month or a year I will switch over to the other team
Edit: I'll look at these again tonight and take your suggestion into consideration.
Any of you guys that are willing to spend the cash to come up here can definitely crash on my couch. Of course, let me know when you're coming. If you're all coming at the same time then I'll probably have to get a few more couches. Bring warm clothes, warm sleeping bags, a decent thermarest self-inflating sleeping pad, and your own snow shoes or alpine skis. My other pair of snow shoes is unusable so I don't have any spares.
Believe it or not, photography is probably the last thing you're thinking about while sleeping in the snow. You're usually thinking about how terrible sleeping in the snow is and questioning why you decided it would be a good idea. A few months later though, you kind of forget that it sucked as much as it did. It helps if you're looking at the photos you took, though.
As far as my bracketing technique:
There are two ways that I have done it in the past. One, you can use the autobracket function of your camera. I don't like doing it that way, but others may have more success selecting several stops and autobracketing. I usually set up a shot in aperture priority with spot metering. I meter as near to the horizon as I can to try and balance for the sky. I take the shot using that metering and then check my exposure first with the preview. If it looks to be about what I'm going for then I bring up the histogram and see if the highlights and the shadows are within the dynamic range of the capture. If they are then I reevaluate the preview and decide whether I can make a better shot by either exposing for better tones in the sky, or for pulling better exposure out of the foreground. If I think that I need to adjust the exposure I switch back into manual and typically adjust my shutter speed by under 1/3 stop. If I have the time I'll check the preview again. If I don't have time then I will shoot, adjust shutter speed, shoot, adjust the shutter speed and do this a few more times in both directions from the original exposure.
I rarely ever blend exposures, but oftentimes I like having a few similar exposures to play with later on. As much as I understand what playing with a shot later in Lightroom will do, I will oftentimes have to switch up what I was planning on doing and, like shooting in RAW or NEF at 14-bit, having similar exposures provides me with a little more head room and, in a way, an artificially more forgiving dynamic range.
Ryan M Long Photography
Buy my Prints!
I second the white balance suggestion. I wouldn't call that oatmeal "vintage" as my roommate bought that exact brand and it sitting in our kitchen.
Also, rreeefffffllllleeeeccctttooorrrrr. Just use some white paper or something on the right side to fill in some of that shadow. Product shots don't often have much shadow in them especially on the main part of the lablel. You might want to also consider doing some sort of seamless setup with some paper or thin poster board.
1) the background's texture is just blurry enough to be unpleasant for me to look at (and presumably others). I would either drape some sort of fabric for a backdrop or else blur the background further. You can do that by moving your setup further from the wall, using a smaller aperture, moving the camera closer to the product, or (this is a less good option) by using photoshop. Honestly I don't find the horizontal 2-tone background (table and then wall / dark and then light) to be very interesting, so I would gravitate towards an alternate background altogether (ie - my fabric suggestion, however possibly having a kitchen "scene" out of focus behind the shot could work).
2) Head-on product shots are pretty simplistic and not ultimately super-compelling. While I approve of your clean, simple composition in general, I feel like experimenting with camera angle, adding other objects, creative lighting, etc might punch up the images in general. As art these don't do much for me, as advertisement they still don't do much for me. Your execution is good (with the possible exception of your light-color) and your leaning towards simple and bold is good, but I think you could push future images. I think that would be a good direction to try to improve in: interesting composition. (I constantly need to work on that myself, so please don't think I am being preachy).
If you want, I'll try to dig up my links tonight on my computer at home of some arty product photographers whose work I think really pushes into aesthetics and art. I find them pretty inspiring although I don't really shoot product/still-lifes like this. Lemme know if you're interested.
EDIT: Jake, you have some amazing tonality in your grays. Excellent! Very clean image (except for the finger-splint).
My Website | My "photo-a-day" 2010
I'm interested in seeing said photographers work.
Or tonight if I have time.
I think everyone should go over there workflow, and probably have them all consolidated in the first post! That would be cool, because we can be like "Kevin (penpal) uses a lot of post processing, and this is what he does"
http://cooleystudio.com/ (this guy's product stuff is under "assignments" but he has some jewelry stuff under "portfolio" that really rock my world)
http://www.stevecohenphoto.com
---
In a slightly different vein is http://www.lincolnbarbour.com, this guy does travel, food, and architecture. He's not as polished/sophisticated as the others, but I do like his stuff.
My Website | My "photo-a-day" 2010
Do you have a polarizer?
Ryan M Long Photography
Buy my Prints!
Made another picture of a flower, but I might have made it a bit too crunchy. Opinions?
Muninn: I like both, although I think the second could use a square crop.
pope: thanks, the splint is actually my favourite thing about it!
Cow: The sky in your first shot is my favorite part. Are you perhaps pulling up a Clarity setting or something that is causing your blacks to muddy up in that wooden post? Maybe it's just slightly out of focus. Something about it is really bothering me. Overall they kind of give the impression that you were losing sunlight and were forced to bring out your flash. Like I want it to either be daylight, or dusk, but it looks like an odd combination.
On the other flower shot, I agree about the colors. The graininess doesn't bother me much, but the image overall doesn't totally grip me. The stem (or grass?) on the right of the flower, it's beige, kinda anchors my eye in that corner and has nothing good to offer me as a viewer. the vertical-ness of the flower doesn't really do anything interesting with the horizontal shot. You might look at a vertical crop to remove the beige thing and to make the photo itself follow the same direction as the flower.
CommieC - I like your treatments and colors a lot! #1 works for me, but I want a little more DOF. The closest (largest) blooms look a little soft to me. In #2 the lack of focus on the post hurts it some, and the overall composition is a little uninteresting. In #3 again i want more DOF to include all of the dominant grass (the big stalks) and the intersection Jake pointed out bugs me as well.
But these are all little, and the pictures are very attractive in general!
My Website | My "photo-a-day" 2010
That's partially the ND grad filter and partially the processing.
Hot damn that's cool.
I worked at a summer camp between May and August. In early June we found a litter of kittens in our compost, and of course they were cute. We convinced our executive director to give us four weeks to raise them and find them homes. Which we did. So here are a few pictures of them. When I took these, I was trying to go for more than just "awww cute kittens!" so hopefully I was able to do that.
The dining hall at the camp
And the dining hall at night time
Someone donated a coyote carcass to my boss, so she left it in the woods for several months for it to rot, then when it was mostly bones we boiled it.
Night time around a camp fire, singing songs.
And for a different set of pictures:
I joined the Peace Corps this past August, and I am living in the beautiful Island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis. I've been here for one month now, and unfortunately do not have my DSLR (It was too big to bring with, since I was only allowed 80 pounds of luggage for my two years here.). Instead I've been doing what I can with my point and shoot, which is frustrating because I don't have much control over it like the DSLR. Hopefully in the next month or so I'll be able to have my other camera shipped down here.
This shot is of an Anglican Church outside of my community, along the Atlantic Ocean. In three weeks I'll be moving into a house almost right next to it.
A view of Frigate Bay from the penninsula.
It's been a while since I've shot, so I'm a bit rusty. I would love some crits though!
first real shoot with lighting
oh em geee I want to sleeeep
I have work at 6 am. I know the highlights are blown on the far right but I felt having the range from complete white, to pretty dark, to the reds and the greens looked nice. Model was my little sis.
Pope:
I am pretty retarded when it comes to certain things, and leaving "out of depth" elements in the frame is one of those things. Each time I think that those elements add more depth and complexity to the picture, and leave/incorporate them in the final frame. Then you guys tell me to get rid of them, I do, and by god the picture looks 100% better. You guys have to keep beating it out of me until I learn my lesson.
Another thing I absolutely adore is lots of negative space within a long, thin, horizontal frame. Something about the way the eye drifts though a sea of color before encountering the pivotal element really pulls at my mojo. In the case of the color picture I chickened out, and did not include as much space to the left of the frame as I wanted, which would really tickle me silly. But then again a vertical crop really does make for a much stronger picture. I will have to either make this personal aesthetic of mine work better for me, or get rid of it.
commiecow: I agree with others in that the first photo is the strongest in the series. Gorgeous colors.
Spacerobot: I really dig your last shot. You could probably tweak the colors and the saturation a bit in the sky, and bump up the exposure in the foreground to tease out more detail out of the bottom third of the frame.
penpal: Your sister is quite good at modeling. Is she single? :winky: ...I jest, please don't kill me.
Great pictures, minus the blown highlights. My only comments would be adding maybe a little bit harsher light to the "dark side of the face" in the first photo, to bring out a bit more detail and contrast, as her skin looks incredibly uniform, and there aren't many points of reference, especially around the cheekbone. Another thing would be doing some sharpening around the eyes, and and that photoshop magic that the Cosmo photographers do to make the eyes "pop". But I would take my comments with a mountain of salt, as I cant say I am terribly experienced in this type of photography. All I know I really dig these pictures
Still trying to suck less at photography. Apart from resizing and some auto-contrast/colour these are unedited. Any pointers?
Seems like a lot of noise in your pics, but I think I remember you saying you're using a P&S? Also, try to avoid midday sunlight if you can, the composition in a few of these are good, but later in the day (or a lot earlier) would probably give better results.
Penpal: I really like the first and second to last, great backgrounds on both. [strike]Only thing I'd suggest is they seem a little hot [/strike](wups didn't see you mention that in your post haha). I'd like the last one a bit more if her back eye was in focus instead of her hair and barely noticeable front eye I think.
My Portfolio Site
I'm using a Canon PowerShot G9.
I would have liked to have stayed around the garden longer, but I needed to go to work not long after. Plus I was with a group of friends, and they wanted to move on. These were taken around 2:00 - 3:00.
forgot to img it
Yeah, using natural light at night, pretty cool i thought