Newlly started hobby...

[wvusa]

Hi everyone! I'm finally getting involved in photography. After enjoying others shots for a long time, I decided to get involved myself, and so far it's been fun. I realize I have a lot to learn, but that's why I'm here. So hopefully someone will be able to take a look at this shot and tell me what i could do to improve the next time. Other than not cut off his ears, lol.



Camera Canon EOS REBEL T3
Exposure 0.017 sec (1/60)
Aperture f/4.5
Focal Length 29 mm
ISO Speed 800
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash On, Fired

[Bruce A]

Well I don't know what Photoshop tool you used to turn this person into a cat, but good job

I think maybe you meant to post this under "Animal & Wildlife" critique section. Anyway, apart form cutting off his ears. Research the rule of thirds to help with your composition/framing. Nice sharp focus on it's eyes, but a little soft on the nose. So research DOF or depth of field and apply it to your lens. Also, although you have the background blurred, a less distracting one would improve the shot.

[wvusa]

Thanks for the tips. I'll be sure to follow up with your advice and see how that works for me. And yes, I did mean to post in the animal forum...talk about a newbie error! I couldn't delete the thread to repost in the correct forum for some reason. But anyway, thanks for the advice, I sure appreciate it.

[Doug Sundseth]

I don't know that this picture would benefit from the cat being moved left or right. As shot, it's very symmetrical, which is usually a decent reason to center the subject.

You're using on-camera flash here, which is resulting in very flat light on the cat. I'd recommend something more directional to give more dimension to the image. This could be off-camera flash, bounced on-camera flash, or continuous lighting of some sort.

If you decide to use flash, you can use a shorter exposure and lower ISO to reduce the effect of the ambient lighting and hide the background quite effectively. If you want to do this, move the flash close to the subject, lower the ISO to 100 or 200, and push the shutter speed to your sync limit (I suspect it's 1/200 sec. on that camera). Then adjust your flash to give you a good exposure. You can take the background down to almost black if you want to.

HTH