First Pic From My Canon 450d

[tdierikx]

I find myself lying prone on the ground regularly when photographing my foster pups... the old knees don't do squats very well.. *grin*

T.

[kja]

I feel that for the last 2 - the lens is probably not correct, I only have a 18-55mm.

The first one is very noisy and I think the lightening was wrong... I would love to hear others comments though.

#1 - I don't know what you mean by noisy? It looks fine on the web. Remember, even if you can see some "noise" in an image on your computer screen, you may not see it in print. It's disconcerting and I have to remind myself that I won't see noise in my shadows or evening skies or whatever when I print. You'll get a feel for it.

Black dog faces are hard to expose for in full sun as there's such a difference between them and the surrounding scene.

A little cropping and this would be a nice photo.

#2 and #3 - yes, you have to shoot for your focal length and/or crop to get what you want. There's plenty of information in the images from your camera to crop pretty heavily, so don't be scared to do it.

I will often shoot something with a view to cropping it when I don't want to change lenses, when I only have one lens with me or for whatever other reason. Cropping is not evil ;)

Getting low is a great suggestion.

Getting closer to your subjects is often a good thing, but sometimes you just can't - and that's OK. Just keep it in mind

As is thinking about your composition. Both of these are happy snaps but a little thinking about what else is in the frame and how you want the image to look when you are done will go a long way to making them more appealing. Don't stress about getting everything perfect every single time - remember to have fun, too. the more you shoot, the more comfortable you will get in just doing all of these things and you'll find it will start coming together more and more.

And fwiw, I'd rather have a happy snappy than no photo!

Edited October 26, 2010 by kja