Brand New Photographer

[Amira]

Okay, I have to preface this picture with the following:

I am a BRAND new photographer. I'm talking I just got my camera a few days ago and have never done anything to do with photography before then besides reading The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby and a few other books. =)

That being said, I am teaching all of this (composing a shot, camera settings, exposure, editing, cropping, etc.) to myself and welcome any critique with open arms! =)

Also keep in mind that while the pictures were taken with a Nikon D80 at 10 megapixels, the quality and size has been reduced somewhat so I could fit them on my computer.

Thanks so much!

[sukanta]

crop the shot to make the object's eye to the upper right intersecting point, Giving some active space for your object will probably look better than bang it in centre. This is true for your part 3 post also.
By the way I am blown by the white balance of your shot. The snow is perfectly white!!!!!! Are you using any preset white balance or its a custom white balance?

[Amira]

I actually did a few test shots with various different manual white balance settings because I was having such a hard time capturing the whiteness of the snow! It turned grey or a little bluish or yellowish in most of my pictures depending on the setting, but a few turned out with a really nice color of white. I did a little bit of post-production editing to enhance the sharpness a little since it was a non-tripod shot with some motion, but overall I think it turned out pretty well. I will try cropping it as you suggest and see how that turns out.