Originally Posted by
hyogen 
In what way is the subject underexposed in the first pic? I did desaturate it overall just for the style I was going for.
Are you familiar with the actual dictionary definition of underexposed? It's not a subjective issue. The only way for something to have been underexposed was if not enough light got to the sensor because of the selected exposure settings. Because of your bright background, your camera will set a faster shutter speed than what the foreground requires thus not allowing enough light to reach the sensor to properly expose the foreground. Madcow did an excellent job of explaining ways around this.
I cropped off the top of her head because wife didn't want me taking pics of her not wearing make-up -_- Is there any other way I could have composed that photo (aside from telling the wife to look away) and not make it distracting?
No, you already have a photo of your wife looking away and because of that limitation you should consider the photo a snapshot and not something that could be representative of your best work. It's pretty tough to get good pictures of someone who doesn't want to be photographed (though take a look at Karsh's portrait of Churchill for a notable exception).
What do you mean what am I trying to show in the 3rd picture, Some friends liked the "motherly-ness" of my wife to the cat. As far as white balance goes, I wonder how different it would have looked if I desaturated the colors after properly white balancing it?
That's what I figured but that doesn't really come across in the photo. I know it's the nature of your cat and the shape of its eyes but it looks scared. I know it isn't scared but that's what it looks like. That look plus the fact that it isn't clear what your wife is doing to the cat doesn't really portray a feeling of motherly-ness. It loos like somthing is being done to the cat that it doesn't like. Again, I KNOW this ISN'T the case but that is how it appears. The lesson: feelings meant to be portrayed in a photograph don't necessarily come across as intended.
The WB of this photo is fine. My point was that, based on your previous (and continued--see below) difficulties with setting a proper WB, you shouldn't be messing with color saturation. If you can't "see" bad WB yet, you're not ready to mess with saturation to achieve different "looks."
Also, your wife's hair is in the cat's face. That bugs me. Others might not care.
Shoot in RAW, got it. I think I see what you mean about the sharpening a technically imperfect photo. It really is very difficult to take a pic of the cat sitting still when I was so close up with my lens. This was shot with the sigma 10-20mm. I might have been closer than the minimum focusing distance also
I want to know your thinking before I comment. What's your goal in shooting such extreme closeups with an UWA? What do you want to portray?
I'll look into the books, but probably won't be selling any of my lenses so I can buy books -_- There are lots of free resources, after all.. 2 lenses are arriving within a week or so, which will be better than other lenses I've had so far... I'm still impressed with the sigma 70-300mm f4-5.6 that I took the first 3 photos with. Surprisingly nice bokeh, if you ask me. Again, it's really hard talking sense into this gearhead....but at least I don't spoil myself with top of the line gear :) I appreciate your input and time--it is important for me to master the technical aspects of photography. I do want to improve every aspect as time allows..really hard for me to find time away from studies right now :(
We've been going around in circles on this but I think we're getting to an impasse: STOP BUYING GEAR IF YOU WANT TO IMPROVE YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY. If you want to be a gear head and swap your stuff constantly; that's fine: whatever floats your boat. But you're missing the forest for the trees. If your knowledge of photography is deficient enough that you don't understand underexposure or white balance (see below), your skills just won't improve until you learn these most basic principles. And concentrating on buying the next lens instead of reference material isn't the way to solve that problem. If you are going to stick with LR4, at least buy that one book. If you use LR without fully understanding it, you can actually do some real damage to your photos. The other day, I thought I had accidentally deleted 20GB of photos that I needed. Nope, it's just that LR4's import tool is ever so slightly different than LR3's and the photos were imported to a different spot than I expected and then the CF card was ejected by LR. Big pucker factor for a minute there!
I've had a lot of fairly in depth, formal photography training in both high school and college. My father was a pretty serious photographer as well to the point that he was a student of Walker Evans. He instilled into me the basics of photography from a very young age and I guess part of the reason why I'm an anti-gearhead is because I've always had good gear. My first real camera was a "hand-me-down" Leica M2 from my father. Pretty serious stuff for someone not even 10 years old! And yet, I still find myself making the same stupid mistakes with my photos. If you look through the photos on the facebook page I linked earlier, you'll see a common problem in the group shots from the closing ceremony: I consistently chop people off too high. Part of this issue is that I'm fairly tall but I leave too much negative space above my subjects when it isn't necessary. You can even see this from shots of people on a medal stand on top of a dais. My head was probably level with the knees at best and yet, I left too much space above their heads. So, whenever I see this bad habit coming back, I re-read some of my books on the basics. Lately that's been Photographer's Eye. My point: no matter how much you think you know, you can always improve something and having solid reference material is key in doing this.
Again, if all you want to do is be a gear head, that's fine, but don't expect your photography to greatly improve or for the tone of our--or maybe just my--comments to change. If you really are serious about improving, buy the 30mm Sigma that you've talked about, stick it on your camera, and leave all your other lenses at home.
What do you think about this one?
To be honest, I'm conflicted. Technically, it's a great photo: nicely exposed with a good dynamic range, sharp, good depth of field, etc.. As far as composition, I wouldn't have chopped off your wife's arm. I would have left just a bit of space below it. Her hair is cut off on the left too. Where I'm conflicted is blocking your wife's face with the cat. I just don't know what I think about this. I can make one more comment about this but I want to wait to hear what you have to say about close-ups with wide angles first.
and this one? taken with 17-50 2.8 Did a little bit of softening in LR. Also cropped it, I think to make it more level with the background if I recall correctly.
Again your white balance is off. Compare your wife's skin tone in this vs. the photo directly above. Also, her arm is chopped off. Always check the whole frame before taking the picture. What bothers me is the roof. Lots lots of textures and dissonant angles, especially the joint right above your wife's head. This is a perfect example of when to use a bokeh monster like the 85 1.2L. Open that lens up and blow the background away! Ultimately, this is just a snapshot; a memento of a day spent doing whatever it was you were doing. Don't get me wrong, I don't say snapshot in a pejorative manner. Using a camera to document an event is its most basic purpose. Not every photograph you take has to be fine art.
Do me a favor, next time you post a photo, you tell us why you think it is noteworthy.
