Newbie with 2 to start

[Greg]

Hello,

Newbie here with a growing interest in photography. I'm eager to hear your comments and suggestions. Not sure about composition...I maybe should've cropped the sand one.

Thanks for looking!

[Digidave]

Welcome to the forums! I really like the second one but the first one is ruined by that plant that is blocking her face. That's to bad, it would have made a nice shot. Keep up the good work & again, Welcome

[Greg]

Thank you for the welcome and for your comments. It is a pity when things get in the way. Especially with kids when you don't have much time to get the shot. I find it so frustrating when I take the perfect shot in terms of a child's expression and realise the shutter speed was too high from the last shot I took and the flash level was right down and the picture is practically black! You can't then recreate it as much as you try.

[jrossh21]

I like both shots, but as digidave said, the plant in the 1st shot is distracting. My eye kept focusing in on it trying to figure out what it was. Try cropping it out and seeing what that looks like.

As for the 2nd shot, I like it as well, but it looks a little grainy. I'm not sure if it's your ISO settings or jpg compression - or my laptop, lol.

All in all, I like your composition and use of natural lighting.

[Greg]

Here is a crop. The leaves encroach quite a lot onto her face which means then that you get that area in the top right which draws your eye instead. So I've cropped both sides. A little extreme maybe, or maybe I should just live with the plant life.

The other pic was originally in colour. I desaturated it and whacked the contrast up which would account for any grain you see - not your laptop To be honest I'm not entirely sure what ISO is in terms of the effect it has on images. I'm playing with shutter speeds and aperture at the moment but how and when to play with the ISO eludes me. Anyone care to give me a quick crash course on the relationship between shutter, aperture and ISO?

[jrossh21]

I thought of another idea for your photo. I made a duplicate layer and used the layer mask with a gradient from black to white which made the left side darker. See if you like it or not:



I got this metaphor from photoxels.com ... I thought it was a pretty good analogy for aperture/shutter/ISO:

The Garden Hose Metaphor

Let's take an aside here to explain a bit more about aperture/shutter speed combination. Think of your garden water hose that you are using to fill a bucket with water. The diameter of the hose can be thought of as the aperture: the larger the diameter, the more water flows through. The length of time you leave the tap open can be thought of as the shutter speed: the longer you leave the tap open, the more water flows through. The speed of water flow can be thought of as the ISO: the faster the water flows through the hose, the more water flows through. The amount of water that collects into the bucket is the exposure.

Let's also pretend that you have two water hoses, one with a small diameter (our F8 aperture) and the other one with a larger diameter (aperture of F2.8).

To fill our bucket, we experiment with the smaller of the two hoses and find that we need to leave the tap open for 10 min (our shutter speed of 1/30 sec.).

So, here we have the following 'exposure setting':

* small hose & long time of 10 min.
* small aperture (F8) & slow shutter speed of 1/30 sec.

OK, so what happens if you use the same small hose but close the tap after, let's say, 3 min? Of course, it's clear that the bucket won't be full.

That is exactly what you did when you kept the same aperture and used a faster shutter speed. Not enough light came in to properly expose the image sensor ('the bucket is not full').

What do you have to do to fill up the bucket? Use the bigger hose! Aha, now with more water gushing out of your bigger hose, you can now close the tap earlier and still obtain a full bucket.

Similarly, to use a faster shutter speed, you need to use a larger aperture. Dial in F2.8 at 1/250 sec. and presto! you've just taken a perfectly exposed picture of your son frozen in motion.

Here is your new 'exposure setting':

* big hose & short time of 3 min
* large aperture (F2.8) & fast shutter speed of 1/250 sec.

[Digidave]

Greg: I think that is almost perfect! I say almost because you cut off her left hand. I see why you needed to though. I think that is about as good as it's going to get. Nice Job!! I really like it!

[Nicole]

Originally Posted by Greg

Anyone care to give me a quick crash course on the relationship between shutter, aperture and ISO?

There's also an article on the DPS Blog called Learning about Exposure which covers how shutter speed, aperture, and ISO all impact each other, and gives a few more metaphors for understanding.

[jiminyClickit]

Greg,



Excellent photo, and about 95% of your original can be saved if you take some time to desaturate, darken and blur the leaf area. Then clone the one on the cheek out, add a little noise, blend whatever bothers until you say "What leaves?" It's so worth the time.

[Greg]

Originally Posted by jiminyClickit

Greg,



blend whatever bothers until you say "What leaves?" It's so worth the time.

I like that. It bothers me if I concentrate on it, but that's because I'm looking straight at it knowing what it is. But if you concentrate on her face then as a whole the whole things blends really well. Nice...I like it.

Thanks to those for the links to the ISO learning pages. I will read them at my leisure...when I get some