Fire breathing

[brendanm]

I am trying to improve my photography and am currently taking a basic digital photography course.
I set the iso on the camera to a setting HI 1, (not sure what this means).
To me, whilst I'm happy with the flames, the mans body doesn't stand out very well, specifically the right side of his body.

Should I have used a flash? If so, what setting?

My equipment is a Nikon D80, Tamron 18-250mm lens, SB600 flash.
I do intend to take a flash photography course in the near future.

Camera; Nikon D80
f 14
1/60 sec

[SwissJon]

Hi and welcome to the forum..

I suggest you read this article, it will help you understand better things like ISO settings. I also recommend you read the manual for your camera.

10 Tips to Help You get the Most out of Your New DSLR

When we talk about a photo, we talk about camera right and camera left. The reason for this is that it's not always possible to see if someone is facing toward us or away from us, or there may be to people, facing in different directions. If you start to talk about the left and right side of the objects in the picture, it starts to get confusing, so try to talk about camera right (the right side of the photo) and camera left (the left side of the photo). In this case you are talking about camera left.

The leg you refer to is in a shadow cast by the brightness of the flames, I don't personally see this as a problem for this photo. A flash may or may not have cast some light on this, depending on how powerful your flash is, but it might also have cast a white light onto the subjects body, which would have been detremental to the picture. I would therefore suggest that on this occasion, you got the lighting right.

By the way, I like this photo, I like the composition, it's very dramatic, well done. Only thing I might have changed is perhaps to crop a mm or two lower at the bottom, so you can see the feet ate standing on earth.. At the moment it looks like he's standing on the edge of the frame, which is kinda weird.

[brendanm]

Thanks for the input Jon. I see what you mean about the feet. I never noticed it until now.
Since taking this picture, I have experimented with the flash and wow, do i have a lot to learn about flash photography!
I will start to use appropriate language such as camera left, camera right etc.
As I mentioned, I am taking a basic photography course so I will be posting many of my pictures for critique so that I will have a decent final portfolio to submit for grading.

[SwissJon]

The whole point of the critique section is to learn, so you're welcome here..

You need to learn to critique the photos BEFORE you take them.. And then again after you've taken them, and then after post processing. By learning to do this, and learning to look around you to see if perhaps there's a better angle to be had (For example in this photo, perhaps moving a little camera right to separate the foreground subject from the person behind them) then your photos will improve immensly faster than if you just take photos and post them here to see what we think. I also encourage you to critique other peoples photos, including my own, as this will train you to look for things in a more objective way on photos which may or may not be better than your own. Try to look at the picture as a whole, look at the exif data and how that may have effected the overall photo, and whether a wider or narrower aperture, a different ISO setting, a different shutter speed, might have improved the photo. You will hopefully learn to use that skill in your own photos.

I agree.. Flash photography is difficult.

One thing to keep in mind.. This is the critique section.. Posting here is an invitation for criticism.. You're asking us what is wrong.. That doesn't mean we don't like your photo, only that we've got out a microscope and examined the photo.. A lot of photos I see on here I'd be proud to have taken myself.