My best advice is to read books written for painters and artists on how to create images. Photography books on this subject are often way to basic. Here is a good example of the sort of thing I mean...
Composition: How To Make Pictures
http://animationresources.org/?p=2033
Art is art. Study from artists, not just photographers.
I bugs me to no end when someone says "shoot only in M mode!" as an answer to the question "I just got a new DSLR, can I have some tips?"
The person who is asking for tips isn't likely to be advanced enough to have the experience to be able to estimate exposure so he/she is just going to spin the dials until the camera tells them exposure is correct or get into the habit of chimping every shot to check the histogram and neither of these is a good practice.
I'd much rather see someone shoot in Av (yes, I'm a Canon shooter) and learn to dial in exposure compensation. At lease their starting point will be in the right ballpark. With my current body, I can dial in 3-stops of EC very easily and another 2-stops by counting clicks. Unless I'm shooting silhouettes against a sunset, chances are 5-stops is plenty.
As above, why would I buy a $1K+ camera with matrix metering and not use it? And before someone jumps on me, yes, I know how to shoot manually. I still keep fresh batteries in my light meters and I still venture out with an M4 from time to time.
Shooting with flashes/strobes, though, that's a different deal. M mode all the way!
I taught myself how to take pictures 35 years ago when I was 15. Most folks, I feel can learn the basics out of a book. When I went to photography school I leaned more. The most fun though, I think was first learning to take photographs. Amazingly my father let me borrow a camera( a Nikromat) and paid for Tri-X Pan developing and printing.
I learned from my photography classes this fall quite a bit an dI learn more form the pro's I have been associated with. leesure does all the schist photo shoots and woo website is Lee work and he has a studio about a hour form me so Lee shown me quite a bit. i also learned from a professional who has a daughter on my daughter track team. The photos Iron dreamer ran and your pictures posted were the best I seen posted here. Iron share t he setting and lens he used. I still shoot DX and I look at lot of photos and see what setting they used to compose hose great shots so i can learn more. I am comfortable shooting manual for landscape and work with a tripod and work the expose. I usually shoot AP for my track shots which has worked well for me. It been trial and error but I am getting better and really cant wait for the spring weather rot get outdoors more often to shoot down the shore. I wan to also get ot the areas in NJ hit hard by the hurricane and see what was done and shoot some of that.
I mainly shoot in manual now, since I'm trying to get better with flash/off-camera flash. Also, for non-flash shots I try to use manual. Since I do quite a bit of processing in Lightroom (and enjoy it), I find it easier to batch edit my photos with the same exposure for most every shot. I'm also practicing for when I'll be faced with odd lighting situations for shoots I have scheduled this year..! A couple baby, a few engagement, and possibly 2 weddings so far. I am stoked, but trying to improve as much as I can so my customers can get their money's worth. I want to build a REALLY strong portfolio this year. This is what I have mostly from my old Rebel and I'm working on a new site. Feel free to critique and tell me which ones of these I should toss out (it's hard for me to toss photos because of the emotional attachment leftnose has talked about before) http://hyofoto.smugmug.com I'm hoping to blow most of these out of the water and not have to include any of these in my new website portfolio.
I mainly shoot in manual now, since I'm trying to get better with flash/off-camera flash. Also, for non-flash shots I try to use manual. Since I do quite a bit of processing in Lightroom (and enjoy it), I find it easier to batch edit my photos with the same exposure for most every shot. I'm also practicing for when I'll be faced with odd lighting situations for shoots I have scheduled this year..! A couple baby, a few engagement, and possibly 2 weddings so far. I am stoked, but trying to improve as much as I can so my customers can get their money's worth. I want to build a REALLY strong portfolio this year. This is what I have mostly from my old Rebel and I'm working on a new site. Feel free to critique and tell me which ones of these I should toss out (it's hard for me to toss photos because of the emotional attachment leftnose has talked about before) http://hyofoto.smugmug.com I'm hoping to blow most of these out of the water and not have to include any of these in my new website portfolio.
A good way to learn is to question and find out for yourself, not just take someone's word for it. I studied to become a photographer in college, but I ended up in the film business The one thing I've learned in my 40 years of amateur photography is that the quality of a photographer is not determined by the price of the camera hanging around his neck. When someone tries to convince me that they know what they're talking about because they happen to have (rented) a very expensive camera, I'm not surprised when they're afraid to show their work.
Here are a couple of my photos. These were particular shots were taken with the camera in my iPhone.
Everyone learn good photoshop techniques! I make more money lately fixing peoples work than anything else.
I just fixed about 50 engagement pictures for 600$ dollars
This is what 5 minutes of photoshop can do. (not my image)
Also make sure you are correcting convergence when shooting architecture. I shot a picture at work yesterday just to show how it can really mess up an image.
Not Fixed
Fixed
No one wants to see a house collapsing in on itself.
Ooo also please put meta data on any images you upload online!
A good friend of mine works in the magazine business, and he is always bitching about finding cool images that work well for a story they are running but the image has no metadata and no contact information! He says 9/10 images have no contact info and so he cant find the artist to pay them in order to use the image. Free money
Gosh so much to respond to! Manual or AV are really all I hear people using. Av for outdoors where the light is changing constantly and the moment is whats important not the light (basically only sports) M mode runs the show other than that.
Here is a cool tip, if you're shooting outside in open daylight (aka not cloudy)
BDE (basic daylight exposure) is always 1/iso at f/16
So if you are shooting with iso 200, accurate exposure for daylight is 1/200th @f/16
knowing this helps so so much when you dont trust your cameras lcd or meter because you can bracket from there easily!
so say you want to use this but shoot at f/2.8. Simply bracket your shutter speed F/16 to F/2.8 is 5 stops of light meaning the lens is allowing 32xmore light in! so compensate with your shutter making it 1/6400s! MAGIC light meters in cameras continue to use reflected light and thus are BAD when not shooting neutral shots. Things with mostly white will underexposure while things with mostly black will over exposure.
Btw pros laugh inside at people checking for exposure on their cameras lcd.. we call it chimping ,because you look like a monkey looking at the camera. (watch someone next time they do this, Hilarious!)
oh also upon request I can show everyone how to make archival mounted prints!
This means the image is mounted like in a museum. (designed to keep the image from degrading)
it also looks great and its amazingly cheap if you want to make an image look professional as a gift or simply to hang.
I'd say (asside from the paper) making a drop mount frame for an image thats about 11x17 or so would only cost you 2.50$ and it looks beautiful.
Really helpful if you like to hang work but like to change it constantly
Everyone learn good photoshop techniques! I make more money lately fixing peoples work than anything else.
I just fixed about 50 engagement pictures for 600$ dollars
This is what 5 minutes of photoshop can do. (not my image)
OMG...how do you market yourself for this? Time absolutely FLIES when I am in photoshop or lightroom because I enjoy it so much......I can't sit still and read textbooks, but I can do this for hours upon hours while robbing myself of sleep. I tend to use Lightroom way more since my computer lags more with photoshop. I also have way more to learn about PS. Sounds like the perfect side-job for me... Here's an example of a photo I spent quite a bit of time on taking away like 10 years of age from this couple's face. I especially like the look of the black and white version. The added catch-lights in the eyes might have been a little excessively done
So the photographer who took those pictures for the couple paid you $600 because that was more cost-time effective for him?
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http://hyofoto.smugmug.com I'm hoping to blow most of these out of the water and not have to include any of these in my new website portfolio.
