GypsK photography

My interest in photography started when I wanted to make my own graphics, instead of using those available on the net, which usualy have copyrights on them.
I have my current camera for about 18 months now: a Nikkon D3000 reflex camera. I bought myself a couple of books which show you how to use it... to be honest, it isn't as simple as I thought it would be. For months all my pictured came out blury or with motion on them. Not that I have spend that much time studying (should do more of that! lol) and I even went back to my compact camera for shooting pics at parties for a while.
But by now my interest lies more in the field of micro-photography, which is not something I can do with my current lens (18-55mm). So I made an agreement with my husband: when I finally manage to get some decent pictures with the current lens, I can buy a (second hand) micro lens to start with. (he just wants to make sure that the whole photography thing is not a temporary thing)

So I spend the last weekend in my garden trying to capture the beauty of nature and I was quite surprised of the results in jpg format myself. I know, there are flaws in the pictures, but they definately make me want to learn and practice even more. When I post these in a digital photography forum I get tons and tons of critisism (which I don't mind if it is constructive....)

The frames and name is photoshoped, the picture itsself isn't altered.

In the garden






Birds nest




trees and treelines








enjoy

Hi

Not to be an a$$ or anything, but spending time on a composition is more valuable in an image than just the image. Images can be altered alot in photoshop but the comp stays the same. You should pick something to focus on and play with it. I assume you're using a standard kitlens and even with that one you should be able to get way more out of that cam than 'just the trees'.

It's a good thing you dive into your cam and all options available, but don't get too excited about the pics you've shown here as you have way more potential!



ps. shooting in RAW does wonders.

So I made an agreement with my husband: when I finally manage to get some decent pictures with the current lens, I can buy a (second hand) micro lens to start with.

You mean "macro"?

Snewpers is right about composition. However the most important thing in photography is light. You can learn good composition, but if the lighting sucks, the picture will still suck. Try shooting those trees in the evening with the sunlight shining through the leaves from behind. They will glow from all the back-light and suddenly you will have more depth and dimension in your image. Also, what is the f-stop on your lens? You need to open is all the way (meaning a smaller f-stop number) to create more depth of field in your image which will help it to pop with any photos you zoom in on. Also, you can shoot very wide landscape images with f-22 and create tons of depth. Lay on the ground, shoot low, so your foreground leads to your background.

What mode are you shooting?
Also, there is no reason for you to be using photoshop to process your images. Get lightroom. It's made for photography unlike photoshop which is made for graphic art. So if you are not interested in heavy manipulation, great, but you still need to process your images, like getting all that yellow out.
Especially if your shooting raw.

Great try though. I like the second one best. Everyone starts somewhere. And everyone is capable of being better if they work at it.

(Also, get rid of the edges. Grungy borders went out years ago and makes photos look amateur. )

reply to post by snewpers


thanks for the feedback

ats doesn't allow posting images in raw format...neither do a lot of other websites

no one said to post them in raw.... just try shooting them in raw for the editing benifits. you'll save them as jpegs after for web sharing and printing.

I'm not sure where your level of photography understanding is at the moment. You have a camera, great. It's a nikon.... that's really great! (I shoot nikon myself professionally) Have you read your manual cover to cover yet? If not, do it. Know your camera inside and out and know the lingo. Then, get yourself to a basic photography class. They will cover basic composition, lighting and exposure, as well as basic editing, most likely in lightroom.

reply to post by Under Water


again thanks for the feedback

Your talking about "getting that yellow out". What yellow are you refering to? The only yellow on those pictures is the collor of the leeves (which is how they are in real time view), they sky is perfectly clear on my screen.
I realize that different monitors give different collors, especially when they aren't set up with the right collor balance. I'm pretty sure my new monitor is set up and caliberated right. (caliberated= that right in english?:puz

As for photoshop, well I know this programe pretty well and it's all I've been working with for years. I know a lot of other amateur photographers work with it.
And I met a few professionals who said "either the picture is right or it isn't. A picture edited with a programe is still a bad picture taken!" hehe
Between the cost of the programme, the camera and the monitor, I'm don't want to make a lot more expenses on my newly discovered hobby, lol...

and yes, I keep calling it a micro lens (as in microscope) but it is usually called a macro lens.

you guys have pictures of your own I can view?

I like trees and your pictures.
They look very unfamiliar, are you in Australia by any chance?

Anyhow, keep exploring this theme.
Trees are remarkably individual and many other lives intertwine with them.
Nice pics, thanks for sharing!

~ ATA

NM, You're in Europe

Just summing it up a little:

I meant shooting RAW so you can edit it more before you export to jpg, dng or whatever.

Under Water is absolutely correct: light is what you capture, but I didn't think I'd need to point that out.

Your images lack depth of field, I could take those with a nikon 5400 point-and-shoot running on auto.

As for photoshop/lightroom: I'm using PhotoShop for about 18 years now on a daily basis and it's not just for graphic art, it works perfectly weel for photo's. PhotoShop has, however, grown a bit too big for just that in recent years and got bloated with crap that most don't even need...
Lightroom is a killer-app! Is really rocks and the latest version has superb noise reduction, can catalog like no other and does an absolute great job.

About your monitor... I know I'm looking at jpg's here, but I have a calibrated barco and eizo monitor and your images have a yellowish tone. You might want to correct that in your own monitor.
What device do you use to calibrate your monitor with?
You could also test that by having the photo's developed by a quality shop and see what you get.

And yes, it's macro lens

Please note that I'm not negative about your photographs, but there are some fundamental things you might look into some more. As said before, thumbs up.

Sorry for what im about to say, but i can doooo wayyyy better with my girlfriends 550D and i don't even know what im doing :/ you need to play with apeture and exposure times and get some creativity, trees are boring. Sorry again for being a douche

wow, what's with all the negativity? They are not 'that' bad...
I had better comments on a badly edited avatar@@:

I did mention that I'm learning to use my camera and that the pictures I posted where the best results I got with it so far, compared with the crap I got with it before... I did mention that did I?
anyway... I for one was pleasantly surprised to see the results I got, since they are becoming better.... it did encourage me to go further with it... after reading the replies, I'm not so sure about that anymore. After all, these where some of the best that came out of the nearly 1500 pictures on that sd card... guess that's funny also.
at this point I'm beying more tempted to remove the photo's then to listen to what everyone else has to say about them, but I'll play fair and leave them up (maybe one day i can come back here and have a laugh about it as well)

About trees being boring, well I have no interest in shooting concrete buildings or pretty ladies, I have interest in nature: trees, plants and bugs, to each their own. Yes, it could be a better composition, but it still are trees.

so ok, when a profesional photographer points out the errors and gives me pointers, I'm ok with that, but if your just gonna give me negative talk while knowing absolutely nothing about photography besides how to use your cheap compact camera, then shut up or show me that wonderful picture you took with your girlfriends crappy camera!:

to Asktheanimals: thanks for the positive reply and I'm from Belgium, Europe

to Snewpers: I'm using a Dell U2410 monitor and Spyder2 (got it with the monitor). It seemed to have good test reviews. I'm looking into my monitors settings as we speak because I still don't see the yellow so something must be off with my monitor or with the Spyder. Thanks for feedback

I love your photos and you have inspired me to see what I an do when concentrating on something other than dogs.

I love the composition in your last photo. That's a cool photo!

reply to post by GypsK


It's not just negative feedback and nobody said you should stop doing what you do. It's just that you asked fom comments and you did get some

A tree is a tree indeed, but composition and light makes all the difference. Did you google a bit for treeshots? Maybe something like this? I know alot of them were modified in PS or LR but the comp and light is still there. I for one did not say trees were boring, I've photographed them alot when shooting on film

I do have a cheap nikon consumer cam for snapshots and a very expensive Canon SLR. I'm not mocking you at all, but you should really get into the basics. Did you figure out why your images were blurry? If so, you know what you need to do to unblur them. Under Water gave some good tips about the ƒ and point of view. If your going to do alot of macro shooting be prepared because that's a whole different ballgame.

You might want to read this.

About the monitor, I cannot help you with that, but all I see on my monitors is too much yellow. Do a quick check in PS and measure the yellow there in your RAW files. I use x-rite to calibrate.

Experimenting get's you a long way, reading up might just get you there!

reply to post by GypsK


Thanks for posting those GypsK, it's a good start.

As some of the other members noted, one thing I would focus on is getting the hang of light and composition, which are equally important for a good photograph. While color may be very expressive and the main focus of some art, I would begin by taking the photos in B&W as a training exercise.

Doing your art in black and white, to begin with, will force you to pay more attention to the composition, contrast in the image, avoiding blown highlights and so on. Once your images start looking professional in B&W and you are happy with the feedback you get from colleagues and those who view your art online, I would start adding color in selectively.

I would also make use of your overlay histograms in your camera. Play with your display settings and check your histogram after you take the photo. Too much data on the right side will mean overexposure and blown highlights, and should be avoided (which you did in your photos above), but having too much data on the left (in the dark areas) is ok to have. Dark areas do not need to have an abundance of detail, whereas highlights need to retain detail in them to be pleasing.

I like your second photo the best, the branches are very interesting. Try turning it into a B&W image and add some grain to emulate film. Up the contrast if needed, but always check your histograms and try to preserve detail. The eye will be drawn to the complex play of the branches in the image and not be distracted to move up towards the mass of yellow and green color (although the leaves in red, yellow and green almost look like brushwork of an impressionist).


Khar


P.S. It's ok to use 'micro' or 'macro'. They both mean the same thing in the industry and it all depends on what brand of camera you use. As you use Nikon, continue calling it Micro. Canon users prefer Macro, for example.

Photography has become and extremely competitive field, even for hobbyists. You probably will get tougher feedback on a photography forum. But you can't let negative or even rude feedback discourage you if this is something you truly want to pursue. But it's very important to have a grasp of the basics. I don't know how much you already know so I'm not sure where to start with advice. What mode do you shoot? M, A, S or P?

My monitor is calibrated to my lab. I am a working professional so I've had to match my monitor to my lab for consistent predictable results. It's possible on your monitor things look fine, but you need to calibrate with which ever lab you plan on using, then edit for that. Photoshop is great. I've been using it since the mid 90's, but lightroom is much better for photography. Photoshop does have a lot of stuff you won't need and is lacking in other ways when compared to lightroom. Lightroom costs a fraction of photoshop, so the next time you are ready to upgrade photoshop, you may want to jump to lightroom instead. The cost may be about the same.

Try joining a group like Flickr . It has free membership and has members from all over the world who will offer you lots of advice .

Here's some of my pic's

Link to my photos here