New To Photography

[kris8583]

Hello to all at DPS!
This is my first post, I have been interested in photography for a while and recently got my first DSLR, a Canon 1000D with bundled kit lenses. I have taken thousands of photos and deleted pretty much all of them! Im still a complete beginner and starting to learn about the features of my kit. Despite being frustrated most of the time I still enjoy the massive learning curve that is digital photography.

Earlier in the year I took some photos of my daughter Jessica and have decided to put one up for comments and advice. I actually had the photo below framed and put up on the wall because my partner loves it. Whilst Im happy with the photo (for a beginner) I know I should be able to get better with the camera I use and that its my lack of experience that takes away from making it a great shot.

So here it is;



Canon 1000D
1/32
F4
75mm
ISO 800

[graciousness]

Hi Kris and welcome to the forum

You've got a super cute kid!

There are a few basic things I would list here:

- The eyes need to be sharp. Everything else can be blurry or soft in focus, but the eyes are the most important and they need to be sharp;

- This is underexposed. If you don't have an external flash and with children who are constantly on the move indoors and outdoors, you really want to invest in one. In this picture, a bounce flash off a wall would have really given this the proper exposure and thus, you could have kept your ISO lower and avoiding noise (grain) unless of course, you actually like a little bit of grain with your photos. Otherwise, without flash, a higher ISO should have been used to bring in more ambient light;

- The conversion to black and white is not quite right as this is overall, a gray photo. A bit hard to do a proper monochrome conversion when the photo is underexposed for a start;

- I don't know if you did any post processing on this aside from converting to b&w, but you can still do a little bit of improvement on this. If you dont mind, I did a very, very quick edit on this just to show you that you can make this a little bit more brighter and sharpen it more (as per attached). From the edit, the sharpness is still a little soft but it's a little better with just a little bit of tweaking. Sorry it's only a quick edit - it can still be done a bit better but I just wanted to give you an idea.

- If you don't already, use RAW file when shooting. This will really help you tremendously when doing post processing work.

- I don't mind the furry rug, but the blanket is unnecessary and a distraction in the background. The cleaner the background, the better. Keep your background nice and simple if possible.

I have a child of my own and she's all I seem to photograph at the moment. I used to be a bit frustrated, too, taking photos of her indoors (and even outdoors) because of lighting issues. That is, until I started using flash and manual settings. It does take time to get used to it, but with a bit of practice and learning (go to youtube and yes, google for lighting tutorials), it won't take you long before everything clicks in your head and you'll be happier with almost every shoot you take.

Anyhoo, I hope this helps. If you want me to delete the edit version I did, let me know and I'll do it immediately.

Just keep posting your photos for critique and trust me, you will improve soon enough! I did

Cheers and looking forward to seeing more,

Grace

[wal]

Love this photo because of the moment, expression she's showing,pose and eye contact.!.... Just my opinion though; I would try to include the entire leg into the frame.
On the BnW aspect, it doesn't really work for me. Try playing with lights to create some shadows, make some interesting tones and contrast.
The soft focus is not really an issue to me.. Kind of like it.
Nice clean background as well. Overall it is still a lovely picture, and just enjoy photography.

[graciousness]

Christ, my edit attachment looks a little bit different to the one in photoshop. Hmmmm...

Anyhoo, the attachment just looks a little bit too overdone on the wall but errrr, you get the idea. Sorry for the so so edit job.....

Cheers,

Grace

[Rookiep01]

Originally Posted by wal

Love this photo because of the moment, expression she's showing,pose and eye contact.!.... Just my opinion though; I would try to include the entire leg into the frame.

I agree! It's aways nice to include her legs in their entirely..... otherwise a cute photo!

[Lisa H]

You already got some awesome CC...so sorry if these are repeats.

First of, CUTE CUTE baby! I love the eye contact and the fact that you can see baby buns...I love baby buns! lol

Things to improve next time...make sure the eyes are in focus. Put that red dot on the eye closest to you when you focus. Next, photo is a bit underexposed and the conversion is muddy. I'd like to see a brighter, and bit more contrasty conversion. The blanket behind baby is distracting (I'd remove it...the less clutter the better), and you should watch not to do any limb crops in the next go round. I hth!

[polarismagic]

I love the photo except I would put her eye color in so that her eye color stood out. But I am just a beginner also.

[kris8583]

Thanks for all the replies there are some good pointers for me to try to keep to. It was hard trying to get her to sit still for long enough for me to snap! The B&W conversion is not quite the same as the actual photo on my wall as i used different program to convert it. Going to try again over the next few days and see if i can get an improvement and i will post the results.