New to the game and would like some help.

[chrisshev]

Hi everyone, my name is Chris I have been a fan of photography for a long time but never really got into it. So I went out and bought a D3100 and figured now is the time. I have been shooting pictures of my kids with a point and shoot but I could never get the shot I was looking for. I'm starting to understand the basics but still fuzzy so I figured some input from others would be the way to go.
Equipment:
Nikon D3100
Lens: 18-55mm and a 55-200mm (both kit lenses and I don't use the 55-200 that much)
Using Lightroom 3 and Photoshop CS5 for editing.
Basic tripod

I couldn't get my pictures to pop up, so here is a link to my Photostream. Thanks for you're input.

Flickr: chrisshev's Photostream

[RichardTaylor]

Hi,
Just pick one pic and post it to this thread, along with the exif.
Critique threads may help others to improve their photography.

Flickr has slightly changed their sharing procedure.
Now it is.
(1) Go to your picture page
(2) Click on the little black down "pyramid" to the right of the twitter icon (just above the top left hand side of your pic)
(3) Click on Grab the HTML/BBCode
(4) Select from the drop down box the image size you want (I usually make it 640 horizontal)
(5) Make sure the html "box" is checked.
(6) From the code box select all the code and copy it.
(7) Back on DPS paste the code into your thread.

Richard

[chrisshev]

Thanks for the help. Here is the picture.

[RichardTaylor]

Technical:
The exposure looks ok however Tommy is a little out of focus which is slightly distracting.

Aesthetic:
I would crop a bit off the bottom to get rid of that bit if wood(?) on the bottom right corner.
The position of Tommy, and that he is looking out of the photograph, gives me a slightly mysterious feel.

I like it.

[chrisshev]

Thanks I will. I'm finding it hard to learn when to go focus or not to. I need to start doing it more. Thanks for the info. I also need to get out of the point and shoot mind set.

[xxrayna]

I had the same issue with depth of field when I first started. I decided I'd start to play with it and did so on almost every shot, then I got home and I'd take a look at each photo and think about what I liked and didn't like about each (this is a good practice anyways). Now I feel a lot more confident when I turn my camera to aperture mode.

If this was my photo, I might go landscape instead of portrait. I think it would give it a nice "deep" feeling. Good start, keep shooting!

[sk66]

I think the biggest contributor is the aperture...no need to be at f/4. I'm also guessing you used an automatic multi-point focus mode and it chose "center"....

Make sure the focus point is on the subject and that you have enough DOF for the image.

[chrisshev]

I have done some color work to this one but I did landscape.