How to improve in photography?

First of all I want to thank you for sharing your experience and observations about using photo forums. The most discouraging reasons from posting your photos at such forums are:

• it is too much time consuming,
• you need to comment other photos to get some feedback on yours,
• some forums are based on unwritten rule “give me nice comment and I’ll give nice comment to you”.

Most of you answered that mainly because of the first reason you don’t post your photos on photo forums no more or only seldom. This leads me to question: what do you do to improve your photography?

Practicing? OK, but how do you know that you do it right? Taking photo courses? All right, but that’s mainly one time event so it doesn’t tell you that you improve continually, right?

I’m really looking forward to your replies and while thinking about answer you can let your eyes wander over following image 😉

~ A Hazelnut Tree Leaf ~
1/100 sec. @ 100 mm, f/8, ISO 640

Technical information: the photo was taken with Canon EOS 450D and Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM macro lens under natural conditions, hand held.

I took this shot in our garden last July when I was walking with a camera in my hand, looking for something interesting. I noticed this leaf and it attracted me by the way how it was lit by sun and how the veins in the leaf were dropping shadows.

Enjoy every warm day as winter will arrive soon!

Bloody Dahlia

I used to post more photos in one post in mini series connected by theme or object but sometimes the result of taking photos is only one good image and so far I haven’t presented these “singles”. So here is the first one (see larger, please):

1/100 sec. @ 100 mm, f/3.2, ISO 200

Technical information: photo was taken with Canon EOS450D camera and Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM macro lens, hand held, in natural conditions. Post-processing contained levels and contrast adjustments in PS CS3 and intensity of red colour was decreased by value -10 on 255 scale.

We have few mini Dahlias (I don’t know proper name) in a garden, each around 30cm high with blossoms around 5cm in diameter. They are in bright colours of red and yellow and as the blossoms are so small they are not very good for abstract images I like to take. I was attracted by inner curved petals in this one and also by the contrast between bright yellow and bright red. The magnification here was something around 1.5:1.

Hope you like it. Any suggestions for improvements are warmly welcome! Is the red too powerful, too bright?

Enjoy the first snow as I do today!

Asters

This is tough season for me. In September when we had an Indian Summer here and trees were slowly turning their colours there was wind all the time and I didn’t take much photos. In that time I didn’t know that it’s going to change…to even worse 😦 Whole October was cold with miserable weather – often rain showers, chilly wind, misty mornings and often not only mornings. As we are used to say: you wouldn’t force even your dog out. As the weather was in misery so was I. Demotivated, frustrated and wanting only to be in warm inside of our house. There was even so low light that any shooting without a tripod was out of question.

I hope that it will be at least a bit better in next weeks and I’ll find enough strength (both physical and mental) to force myself out to take some photos. But with shorter and shorter days it will be impossible soon.

Here are ones of last photos that I took sometimes back in September.

1/250 sec. @ 100 mm, f/10, ISO 200

1/125 sec. @ 100 mm, f/5.6, ISO 200

1/100 sec. @ 100 mm, f/5.6, ISO 200

Technical information: all photos were taken with Canon EOS 450D camera and Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM macro lens under natural conditions.

I was interested by different colours in these asters and by curved thin petals pointing in all the different directions. I think that asters are ideal flowers for macro and close-up floral photography and if you didn’t try to shoot some, give them a try. You’ll by very probably surprised by the results. It’s good to shoot them in no wind because the blossoms are very lightweight and sitting on a thin stem they will move even in the slightest breeze. A good tripod is also very recommended here and I regret that I still don’t own one.

I hope that I will post more photos soon so be sure to come back and check it out.

Until then, enjoy the autumn in its full strength!

Roses, roses…

Well, actually I have only one rose to show you but I like how the title sounds 🙂

A season of roses is slowly getting to its end. I like roses, they are so fragile, exist in so many colours varieties and smell beautifully in contrast to many other flowers. It’s interesting that even though they are so beautiful ,and thus a perfect subject for flower photography, it’s not easy to take photos of them, especially close-up or macro photos. First, you need to find a blossom which is in a perfect shape, this may be a problem and it may take a while even in a rose garden. Second, you need to find suitable composition which may also be a problem. You can always take a photo of a flower as a whole but that’s usually not very interesting, at least for me. If you are going to take some close-up or macro shots then it’s good if the flower is not opened yet and some stage of a bud is always good. In my opinion the best blossom for shooting is a bud with only couple of petals open or half open as a whole. Once it is fully open it’s almost impossible for me to find a composition that would satisfy me.

When I was coming home from work last Monday I was passing rose bushes next to our gate and one yellow rose bud caught my attention. It was very windy that day, sky was strongly overcast and as it was after 5 p.m. there was not much light remaining. I hurried to the house, took my camera, cut the blossom, put  it in a vase, took it outside to a place where a wind would get only rarely and started shooting. During some 30-40 minutes I took over 100 photos with different compositions, f-stop numbers and ISO. Unfortunately as I was shooting it was getting darker and darker and I ended with ISO 400 and lowest f-number on 4 😦 Without a tripod I couldn’t do much more about it. Here you can see 2 photos which are the best from this session, in my opinion.

1/125 sec. @ 100mm, F5, ISO 400

1/60 sec., 1/125 sec. @ 100mm, f/4, ISO 200-400, 3 stacked images

I took maybe several hundreds of photos of roses in past months and years trying to capture the beauty of it but I was never happy with the results. I’m quite happy with these two. Are you happy with them as well?

Have a nice weekend and enjoy the fall!

Playing with (vine) leaves

This series is a real fun for me. I like to look for something interesting in trees or bushes, especially when evening light is shining through them lightning up all the veins and other details in leaves. We have one vine bush in our garden and those beautifully saw-shaped leaves look splendid in evening light. I tried some cramming in the leaves and here is the result.

1/400 sec. @ 100 mm, f4, ISO 200

1/250 sec. @ 100 mm, f4, ISO 200

I hoped for more yellow colour but leaves seems to dry quite quickly and most of them is dry by now when grapes are almost ripe, absorbing every possible bit of light.

These images are not my common stuff so let me know what you think about it.

Enjoy the starting autumn!