Getting used to the new camera
These are the first I'm comfortable posting. The Lion's head is from a large wall fountain in our backyard that we don't use because it uses too much water. The other fountain is a small one my wife keeps outside of the door of her bedroom because she likes the sound and it attracts birds. The other is actually my favorite. It's just two empty flower pots against the back wall. The ground looks a little funny because it's actually pool Kool decking.
I hope you enjoy them and be gentle, they are new efforts.
And please stay on topic and polite. Thanks.
Before I read your post, I thought that they were 3 different photos, but your explanation indicates that under the lion's head is one photo only. If it had been 3 photos I thought the middle one was the best of the three, with an interesting subject and great variation of colours.
Actually they are three separate photo's. I just have to get better at posting. A good friend of mine gave me a Nikon D200 with a great zoom lens and I haven't held a serious camera in 40 years since I had a Cannon F1 in college and man have they changed! So I am taking a lot of time learning all of the new features! I would like to say I just picked up the camera and shot these, but I shot easily 200 photos before these and 40 when I was trying to get these shots.
I bought the first Canon F1 camera that was sold in Toronto, and it was my favourite camera of all time. Sold it on eBay about 30 years later for about 2/3 what I paid for it - it was a classic professional camera.
You posted a comment on the Creative Arts group saying that you intended to start posting photos and would welcome advice on your photos. If you post photos there then I and I know A.Mac would be happy to help you on your way to posting professional work. As far as I am concerned you're already on your way.
I am going to post some on the Creative Arts Group. I have to admit that I have already been getting some advice from AMac, mostly in slowing down and learning the camera first and some great links to tutorials on the same.
The F1 that I had in college actually belonged to my roommate and he had a Nikon (I don't remember which one) that he used and I thought it was a great camera too! We did our on processing as we changed the walk in closet in our apartment into a darkroom. Saved a lot on costs and we got to play with the effects more.
As for professional work, well I hope to get to that point, but will be just as happy being an enthusiastic amateur.
I had darkrooms in my homes for many years, did my own film processing and enlarging with a Leitz Focomat. Here's a great story about how my darkroom actually sold one of the houses I lived in. My wife had our first baby but we were living in the first house I owned - it was in downtown Toronto and she wanted to raise kids closer to suburbs, so when a house across the road had an open house we put up our own open house sign. A young woman came over to see our home and said she wanted to see the basement first. I asked her why, and she said her husband was a photographer and had to be able to install a darkroom. So I took her downstairs and showed her that I had a virtually professional darkroom set up there. Her jaw dropped to the ground and she said don't sell the house to anyone - I'm calling my husband to come and see this. Later in the day, after he had seen it, and signed a formal purchase agreement we sold the house to them for more than we expected, we opened a bottle of champagne and the 4 of us celebrated the transaction. It could be a little important also that our house was designed and originally lived in by the famous architect/scuptor Walter Allward, who had designed the Vimy Memorial in France and some of the most famous statues in Toronto. It was a unique home.
Well, that's one way to sell a house! Fortunately I don't have to process my own any longer or I'd be broke by now with all of the film I'd be burning through just to learn everything on this one.
Good start with your new camera, Randy...
Keep the photos coming.
BTW that Cool Deck is great stuff. I had it at my Vegas house.
Thanks. As I get better I hope to post more. That Kool Decking is great. Spray some water over it and you can actually walk to the pool from the house in July. Doesn't photograph well though.
These are nice, clean photos and are actually even better than they look herein. By that I mean, digital photographs, particularly when shot as JPEGS, frequently need a bit of editing to get them to their optimum best.
That's not the photographer's doing; it's the fact that a digital camera's processor makes certain decisions prior to recording an image to a memory card. While it does this to save memory (file size), it does so be compressing certain information … at times, up to 1/3 of the color information.
Usually, incremental adjustments in contrast (using LEVELS adjustments i.e. in Photoshop) and some saturation bumping, etc., will do the job.
But ALWAYS … concentrate first on COMPOSITION … because a poorly composed image won't be saved by editing.
You are definitely on your way.
Thanks AMac. As I said the one that is my favorite is just the two empty flower pots. It seems to be the kind of direction I want to go instead of photos of birds and flowers and such. What I would really like to do I can't do and that is to go back to Michigan and take photos of some of the old, broken down dairy farms and barns, especially the barns on the inside. Something attractive about what once was and is no longer. The texture of the old wood and rusting steel and iron. I'm going to do some research and see if there are some old ranches around here that I can go shoot at. My backyard is suddenly very small.