Very amateur photographer looking for opinions

I only have a few pics up so far, and to call myself a photographer a bit of an overstatement. Also, I'll take any links to reading on composition and techniques.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/valpo_hawkeye/

Nice pictures!

You can find some good reading at dpreview.com

dpreview.com (which was just bought by Amazon today) is better for the equipment side, whereas www.luminous-landscape.com is great for technique. I think together, they give a really great overview of digital photography. Although nothing will help you more thank taking pictures! You've got a nice start as it is!

john

Very nice! I just started being very interested in photography lately and I found photo.net to be a great site. The learning section is pretty big. Feel free to take a look at my very amateur "gallery": http://www.flickr.com/photos/7963150@N04/

Also, you should check out a book that I found fantastic: "Exposure and Lighting" by Michael Meadhre and Charlotte K. Lowrie. Lots of information in there...to me anyway.

Take care

if you do want to be a photographer some day you need to read Ansel Adams and understand the zone system.

this is what you should study first to the exclusion of all else.

To be a real photographer you must buy lots of expensive equipment.

Never mind if you actually use it or not, or just put it on the shelf for show.

We all know that buying the latest and greatest camera makes it take wonderful pictures, the advertisements say it so it must be true!!




Seriously, I think you have a good eye. You may want to consider crossing over into SLR land to open up more creative potential, but it may make all your lights look cheap.

I liked your moon shot. I would consider two exposures for that, a long one for the background (blow out the moon) and a short one for the moon, then combine both in Photoshop to take care of the dynamic range. Hey.. it's art.. it's not journalism where you can't PhotoChop anything

Man, your "very amateur photographer" make my shots look like caveman efforts.

You got some really nice shots - congrats. I'm still working on technique and stuff - long ways to go.

Good eye for composition Valpo! I used to be serious about photography back in the day when we used film. It's a great hobby and you might even make some money at it!

Technical acumen is the easy part. Proper exposure, color balance, steady hold etc.

Composition is the hard part. You have a good sense of composition already. That is a major leg up on many.

What I tell people in the camera club is to look at photos you like, lots of them. Take lots of pictures of things you like. Show only the good ones. I can't remember if it was Ansel Adams or Fred Picker that made the comment that ten or twelve good pictures a year is a good amount of work. Of course art photography is different than people/photojournalism photography where the "Good" label has a different meaning.

My Photo dot Net portfolio is here. It has film and digital, plain and doctored. Plus some old family negatives for giggles. To get these few shots I snapped hundreds of images. Good thing digital images are free. I shot about three hundred images recently and had nothing to show for it. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.