Linda K

gorgeous man

he is absolutely, just a yummy boy

have you tried ebay?

Puggawuggles, so sorry to hear of your loss, RIP Doug That was a beautiful poem Jackie, you have me in tears reading it thinking of my own special girls waiting there

OK, first thing, what are you going to want to do with this - ie are you just looking for something to take good shots with of people and pets, are you into landscapes, (or want an allrounder to do all of the above) or are you looking to take it a step further and go into it seriously - that will help dictate if you look at a nice consumer level SLR and a couple of good combo lens, or a more prosumer type camera, and good glass. The other thing to consider, is what level of editing are you looking to do with the camera - with digital, you pretty much have the choice to shoot jpeg, and let the camera dictate a lot of the decisions re sharpness, saturation etc, and process minimally, or shoot RAW, and process via something like photoshop and have full control over the final look of the images.

one thing to bear in mind (esp with photographing subjects that are white or black), is that your camera is designed to want to try to expose things as 18% grey. That means that if you rely on the camera telling you it has exposed it perfectly (ie the little lines in the exposure setting are bang in the middle, it is actually making it grey. That means that blacks get turned lighter, and white gets turned darker. The key then is to underexpose (maybe by a stop or 2), black subjects, and overexpose white ones. A better guide is to learn to rely on the histogram within the camera (the little graph thingy), which shows you where you are capturing the information - for black subjects, you should have information to the left, for white to the right, and the key is to try to make sure you do not have the hum pushed hard up against either side (which means then you have clipped details - ie there is just no data there). In order to work out what you need to set the camera at, you can either just take a test shot, and adjust accordingly, using the histogram, or use a grey card. The shots above - no 1 you have made challenging by going full sun where you are, and having that to contend with as well, and the background is a bit messy - a couple of steps to the left would eliminate that potentially. I generally try to look for patches of open shade (without dappled light coming through), if trying to take shots during the middle of the day like that, and then try to move my subject so they are getting the best light (watch for the catchlights in the eyes, the thing that really adds that sparkle and life, and stops them being big dark pits. Would ditch the edit on this one. No 2 though - love it, and the edit you did with the vignette - just great, nice and simple, and love his expression, and great detail on both sides of his face. Definitely a keeper!!!!

don't think there is a period of grace, they were on the radio saying you could go and buy 5c stamps to add to the letters if you have 55c ones at home, such a nuisance

do you mean like a template - you can just create one of those in photoshop, by creating a initial blank canvas to whatever size you want, and then copy each image onto it using layers and resize to desired finish size. Or you could get really fancy, and create your finished template already with blank spaces for the image, and then copy and paste into each layer as desired. You can buy blank templates like this from various places on the web, but they are also not too hard to make - all you need is to know what you want to end up with, an use the ruler tool when making the template. Have fun!!!

Just lovely Helen

great shots, just a couple of bits of cc- with the backdrop, make sure you get all the crease out before taking the shots (saves heaps of time later cloning wrinkles) - if you have it pinned tight, and the subject a bit further away from it, these should be better. The bottom shots look a bit cool (the white bits on the coat are nearly blueish instead of a nice white, but a warming up in photoshop should fix this up. Love the eye contact, and great catchlights, and beautiful subjects

Hope it is OK to post this link - vetshop Australia are offering 1 free sticker per household, which you can stick in a visible [place (eg near the front door), which indicates how many pets might be inside needing rescue in case the house is on fire. link Linda

love 3 & 5 too. You have great focus and clarity in these, and that is half the battle. I personally prefer that the colours of cats or dogs are kept more natural, so think the golden colours in a couple of the images can easily be corrected in photoshop - nothing wrong with a bit of sun glow, but it can overwhelm a bit sometimes.

I think you can also export them from iphoto can't you? If so, create a folder and save them to that,m then you should be able to do whatever you want with them (haven't used it for quite sometime, as I use Bridge & Photoshop only now, and dump my cards directly into folders, do not use iphoto at all anymore)

I always backup immediately once thy are downloaded from my camera onto 2 different external harddrives, that way if my computer crashed (which it has done), or if one harddrive crashes (which I have also had occur), all is not lost - if I lose 1 harddrive, I immediately get another, then copy the first harddrive to the 2nd - have learnt the hard way after losing an entire year of personal photos not to just trust stuff on the PC only

generally, you will find that the copyright that you have signed will have waived your rights, but check anyway - I know that the ones I use say that I can use the images I takje in anyway to promote my business, but if I am using it for anything else, that they will be advised. I do not work for advertising though, these are only for portrait & pet work.

not that area, but they do sometimes get snow at Mt Macedon, other than that, just keep the ears peeled for anytime they talk about snow on the hills close to Melbourne, and then go for a drive.

What you should see is it goes dark, and you see a view through the viewfinder of what you are going to get, it does take a bit f practice though to get used to. How close were ou to what you were photographing, and where were you focusing? When I am trying to do what you were, I would be of preference using at least the 135mm lens, on F2, and would be about 7 foot from my subject - with the 50mm, I would be a lot closer, say 2-3 feet at most.

was also going to say a big factor is also the lens - a 50mm or telephoto lens is a lot easier to work with to get that bokeh than a wider (say 35mm) - that is where I love either my 85 or 135 o my full frame camera. Also depends where you have focused in this picture too. A good way to see what effect you are going to get with your picture is to use the DOF preview button on your camera if it has one - on the Canon it is on the front, and that will then give you a view through the viewfinder of the shot as being seen at the current aperture the camera is on - that will let you know if you need to finetune it before you take the shot. other than that, just practice with each lens using a stationery object at varying distances to the background, and apertures, and you will very soon learn what will give yo the effect you want

looking forward to it, will be going on the trade day, so hopefully won't be as busy

bit like the old Ford vs Holden or PC vs Apple Mac - both have their great features, and both have very passionate supporters - me I use both, and can say that the Canon 5dII and Nikon D700 both handle low light well

15MP but what sort of camera, and what size is the file already that you are trying to upload (go into photoshop, and look at image size, and tell us what it says there, and how many MB the file is)? Some camera phones can take large MP images these days, but does not mean they can blow up to that size satisfactorily - you would be looking at a file taken by an SLR< and one with at least high endish one at that to go really large with clarity.

would look into hiring a good lens maybe - 70-200L?

I only sharpen an original file once it is cropped and ready to go t the printers - ie if I want the same photo as a 5x7, 8x10 etc I crop it first, then sharpen and save, then would go back to the original unsharpened file, crop again, then apply sharpening at that size. For web files, same deal, I take the unsharpened file, crop to web size, then apply my web sharpening - which is done to taste on a file - I have made my own action which applies a sharpening as a 3 step process - USM (unsharp mask), 110 - 0.3 - 0, then USM 110, 0.2, 0 then USM 100, 0.2, 0 (then I will look at file, go back into history if need be and backstep. Web files I always save as about a 10 size image.

another good thing is to let us know what the settings are. Also, how are you metering with these, are you spot metering on the subject (the dog), or letting the camera pick it by matrix or allover reading - a couple with the dog, the subject is very dark, whereas the water is nicely exposed, whereas if you want the dog exposed you would need to override what the camera wants to do by either opening up the aperture or using a slower shutter speed. Harsh light is also not the nest for getting subjects in, I try to either go for less harsh shadows, even shade, or even best of all, a nice bright overcast day, so you are then having the sun act as a giant softbox, and there is no harsh shadowing. Agree with trying different angles, or even getting the subject at different heights to you too. Love the catchlights you got in that last dog shot, and look like the focus is good on those (hard to tell as they are small), but the other will all come, it is just a matter of lots of practice.

loving the light much better here, and love that great S curve you have going on in no 2, moves the eye really nicely through that image. Great work