Are You Serious Jo

Yep, I'm a member of the Riverland camera club, I have to go back each month for a doctors appointment so I time it for comp night. If you've got the time a club is great, especially if they have judges critiques for their comps. Even if you don't chat a lot to the others you can learn a lot from entering your shots. Having a different subject each month also helps get the creative process going as you have to shoot things you don't normally shoot in an interesting way :laugh:

Thanks snook :D This one goes in on Tuesday, and I'll get back last month's entries and the photo of the year should be back then. I've got two entries in that too, so keep your fingers crossed :laugh:

That's a much more interesting shot, but I would have zoomed out as everything is too close to the edge. If you can't find anything else you could put Toby in the wheelbarrow and have it facing you then get low, call him and try to get him jumping out? It's not a great object to make interesting but not impossible.

I tried them in focus and it just didn't work as well. The unopened bud is close to the lens and the dead one a fair bit back. I moved them all over the place at first and tried so many different ways of lighting and used two different types of light bulbs. In the end I settled on leaving the two OOF even though my original idea was to have them in focus.

This is one I planned for the set subject for next week's club comp, subject is three. I wanted to show three different stages of the flower. It's deliberately dark, I tried to get as much as I wanted in camera so there is very little PP. I didn't have the right torch to light the flower petals enough so I had to later two images and do a small levels adjustment in PS. I'll be doing test prints tomorrow so would appreciate any critiques before then.

Ok, we can use this to improve your basic PP skills. Don't be afraid to just set the WB temp yourself, even if it's cloudy sometimes that temp is too high for some shots. Auto features are a last resort so we can go through some basics when you have a few shots to choose from. If you want, I'll go through my basic workflow so you can get an example of one and adapt yours from there. Don't apologise for anything, if we don't get our stuff out there we can't improve. I put things up online and in comps for feedback as well, knowing they won't win but I might be stuck with some aspect that I need help for.

So many looked OOF but I wasn't sure if it was just me. It was always going to be a trainwreck, one of the hardest types of shoots and noobs who don't know the camera. I didn't really like any of the chosen shots TBH.

Firstly, can you retake the shot? I'd get down on the ground and try some different angles to make the wheel barrow as dramatic as possible. I'd get up close and maybe put something spilling out, rope, dog something :laugh: It's lacking a good composition and without that the PP won't help you much. If you can't take another shot what have you done so far with PP?

Yep, photographing people sucks :laugh: I've been trying to get some with the tele but their spidey senses must tingle because they look at me and I lose my nerve. Post as many pictures as you like TLC, you seem to have a good eye and I love seeing what other people take.

Yeah, that zebra shot bothers me too, but was good to practise as I had to do a bit of burning as well as toning. I want to enter three in the mono section of the club comp next week and needed a third. I have some awesome shots of the zebra foal playing with another zebra and every bloody one has some softness around the muzzle of the foal I've got a list of shots to try mono on so I'll pull out another one to enter, I'm getting better at letting go of sentimental shots and only entering decent work.

I got to break away from animals though, so that's why you see animal, animal, animal, kid, animal, animal, building :laugh: I can't wait to get my slides done, those are what I'm really happy with.

There you go TLC, I've uploaded a few of my photos. Some of my best stuff is on slide which I have to have scanned, getrting it all out of storage next week. I've started going through some old shots and processing those but some of it is new. This is the first time I've done mono so be as brutal as you like, I won't be offended. http://www.flickr.com/photos/81363891@N04/

CCing is easy, a bit harder to always remember and get it right with your own photos :laugh: I like listening and reading judges critiques, it's a great way to learn.

Nice I've just made a second flickr account so I can keep one clear of experimental crap :laugh: Now have to rename some files before I upload as the names are a bit stupid because I code them. I'll post the link in here tomorrow so you can see some of my stuff, and feel free to CC them too!

I've only posted my experimental stuff so far but I should put some of my stuff up to get some fresh eyes. I'm trying to tackle different subjects and shooting styles instead of the usual things I shoot. I'm about to finish processing the next batch of pics for the next comp night at my club, I'll put a few up tomorrow. I'll tidy up my flickr gallery as well so I can just direct people there as well. Right now I consider myself a good photographer, but I'm working on becoming a great one.

I only enter club comps but I think it's pretty standard that companies who run competitions do this, from what I've read. I'd say that the companies want to use the images in product promo material.

That B & W is better, the dog has more definition now. The eyes look good, I can see a hint of the pupil which is enough in a dark eyed dog, just move one of the catchlights over a bit, they don't match position enough, but they look good! You could possibly make the CLs a tiny bit smaller, but it looks much better.

Do you know how to do layer masks and selectively lighten areas? I wouldn't do an overall boost in brightness, just lighten the eyes a smidge. The easiest way to do it is make a new layer, lighten till you get the eyes where you want, add a layer mask and reveal just the eyes. You'll blow out the image if you do an overall adjustment. I've just checked the comp page and you should definitely enter, but get the catchlights right first :laugh: Since you have time I'd also just put the image away for a week then come back and look at it with fresh eyes. In the meantime do some reading on how to resize so that you don't lose detail, you'll be going up against people who get that spot on and it would be awful to lose because the image lost something in converting it. It's also something I need to learn more about too so you aren't alone.

All you need to do for catch lights is a small dot, in photoshop use the brush tool, very small and select white and just dot it in. People do it all the time so don't worry about adding it in, it's important to have. Just have a look at a some dog portraits in google images and you'll get an idea of size to use. It would be a shame to get beaten by someone else because of that. I like the black and white as a low key image but I think that the colour version is better, I'd save the B and W for future competitions, I can't put my finger on it but I feel it's lacking something.

I like the first shot, the colours are subdued and I think it works well. The last is too orange around the eyes for me and not sure about the overall orange cast. I like the black and white and would pick that if I hadn't seen the top version. Which ever shot you choose I suggest you slightly darken the flash on the metal bits and fittings, those spots are too bright. I'd also put catch lights in the dog's eyes, it's the first thing a judge looks for.

I consider a professional as someone who knows photographic principles well and can apply them, even if they don't usually do so. You should be able to put a pro in front of an unfamiliar subject or scene and they should be able to produce something decent. So to me, having both creativity and technical knowledge. I think the rules for some organisations is that you make at least 20% of your income from photography to be considered professional? The amount that you earn (if any) doesn't come into it for me, I've seen woeful "pros" and fantastic amateurs. I know things have changed a lot now that digital has made it easier to take photos but I still like to see some skill and knowing how to shoot manual etc is important!

Yeah, you can't really judge whether someone can turn professional based on one shoot. You can get a great shot by luck and it is insulting to those of us who have spent years learning the principles of photography. They may be good enough or they may not, who can tell from one photo.

But you aren't really under exposing, you are setting the exposure to what it should be. Cameras are set to meter to give mid tones, it wants to darken very light subjects and over expose very dark ones because it want to turn them 18% grey. With mid tone subjects you can usually trust auto metering, but you can't with extremes. It's a thing, look it up there is a lot of stuff on the net that can explain it better than I can. This is where going back to basics helps when you want to do more than take happy snaps. The best thing you can do is take some bracketed test shots, learn by doing some reading them some experimentation. You need to know when to take over the controls. I suspect your exposure out of the camera was ok in the last shot was because the background was relatively dark. You get a light background and dark subject and you'll have over exposure on the black.

Well done Piper, Jazz and Weasles

Yes, a lot. I learned on CS2 so I'm working through the new features on CS5 and brushing up on old things I learned. Content aware is such a time saver. A bit fiddley on busy backgrounds so you have to do a bit of cloning as well sometimes, but overall it is awesome.