I’ve been getting more and more interested in photography over the past few years, and as I’m getting a little more practice, and better cameras, I’ve been getting a lot of compliments and suggestions that I start seriously persuing photography as a career.
While I do think some of my pictures are pretty damn nice, I usually just pointed the camera at something that was already quite beautiful. Like this or this. They’re interesting pictures, but I really had nothing to do with that.
If they’re any semi-professional photographers on the Dope, I’d like to get your input, or maybe tips to improve my pictures. It sounds enjoyable- to be able to take photos professionally- but I’d like to get some sdvice from those in the know if I have what it takes.
I really liked Entrance to the Golden Gate. Blanket of Fog could have been more “powerful”, if it had a more definite “center point”, and some sort of leading lines. Maybe a slight crop to bring the tower more into prominence. Ferry Building and Bay Bridge was good, but a slightly different vantage point to clean up the left hand side would have helped. For Fireworks, I would set up a little further away or use a wider lens, to catch the curve of the stands and more of the fireworks burst.
These are just my opinions, and I am not a professional. I also KNOW that we can’t always control everything. I myself miss far more good shots than I get. Everyone does. So all in all, I like. The best advice I can offer is, shoot every thing you can, develop an “eye”, and be ruthless in your editing.
Don’t worry about “better” cameras. Just get one that feels right to you, and can be used in a manual mode (for more control). You don’t want to be fumbling with the settings or various modes when the shot of a lifetime happens.
You’ve got a decent eye. The shot of the Lucky 13 bar is quite nice. The scrabble picture, on the other hand, is mistitled. It’s a decent shot of the coffeehouse ambience, but the face is too underexposed (and blurry) to capture the intensity of the game, and the center of focus of the photo is actually the brightly lit picture on the wall.
As far as professional goes – it’s a tough, tough dollar. Depending on exactly what kind of photography you want to do (landscape/art/portrait/news), you have to be technically meticulous and/or extraordinarily good at people skills.
Have you tried joining a camera club? If you really want to hone & test your skills, they are a great way to go. My dad and I have always thought that we took good pictures, then he joined a club. At their meetings, he gets to talk to people of all levels (including people who judge), learn a tremendous amount (a tiny bit of which trickles down to me), and put his pictures up against others’ for a comparison (he’s good, but some people are really good). They will have such activities as “scavenger hunts” and other games, then they will go back and have the results judged. (I went with him to one judging event, and , man, was it an eye-openner. We were only there for ~ 1hour, but they must have judged ~600 slides.)
He is now a waaaaaaaay better photographer than I am. I take decent vacation shots, he takes good pictures.
Ah hell, I just “titled” those so the links here would be something other than filenames or URLs. That bar is pretty crazy all over the place, and I thought it’d make for a cool shot, with Jess sitting there with the weird artwork & chalkwork looming behind her.
I’m an amateur who’s shot a couple of weddings (as a backup photog) and made a few print sales. You’ve got a good eye but you’ll have to work on the technical side.
You’ve got exposure problems in a number of those shots (due mostly to the limited dynamic range of most cameras. One way to compensate for that in your landscapes is to use a graduated neutral density filter to tone down the highlights in the sky and allow the camera to meter for the foreground. The “Scrabble Game” needed a flash to fill in the details of the player and increase the shutter speed to eliminate motion blur (handy tip: try using a small mirror or business card to “bounce” the flash upwards towards the ceiling. The reflected light will be softer and seem more natural than a flash shot directly towards the subject).
Post-processing is also important. Picasa is a good beginner’s program that allows you to do basic edits such as crop, adjust exposure, constrast, saturation, etc. If you want to dig a little deeper, Photoshop Elements is an excellent photo editor at an affordable price. Photoshop is the industry standard but it costs a pretty penny and Elements contains many of it’s most important features (except curves, damnit!).
That said, technique isn’t everything and I do like some of your stuff. My favourites are probably “Lucky 13” and “Fireworks at the Colusseum”. I second the suggestion of joining a camera club to learn from other members and get valuable face-to-face critique. Since you’re a flickr member, you might also try checking out some of flickr’s critique groups such as Critique (duh!), and C.A.F.E. (which I co-admin).
As for making a living at it, I’ll have to leave the comments to others. I know pulykamell is a pro so if he does vanity searches, maybe he’ll show up.
Been a photographer for nearly 10 years (had professional training when I took Graphic Design & Advertising in college). Some of your photos (eg. Alyse Tending bar, Superbooty) will look good in a photo album, but you wouldn’t see them anywhere else. Others (eg. Fireworks Night at the Coliseum, Intense Scrabble Game) invoke emotional response - when you achieve that, you know you have good photography. Composition and clarity is important, but it’s about more than that. Good job - keep at it.
I agree with others that you don’t need a “better” camera - mine is an approx 40 year old Miranda SLR. Weighs a ton, has a noisy shutter, and has a telephoto lens that you could knock someone out with. And closeup shots? I have to use a bellows. But it takes gorgeous photos, and that’s what you wanna shoot for (no pun intended).
I agree that you have an eye for interesting subjects. I took one class, so I’m not an expert, but I learned a lot. The class’s primary objectives were learning about shutter speed, aperture (f-stops) and depth of field, then doing assignments to explore those objectives.
You captured a nice depth of field (how far your focus reaches) on the iPod picture. You can affect depth of field using aperture size, your distance from the subject, the subject’s distance from the background, or a combination of all three. As you can tell, this is a nice dramatic effect that takes your pics up a notch.
I would have like to have seen some depth of field on the picture of the bartender (bottles and such blurred). I also liked the dancers…did you capture the motion intentionally, or did it just happen? I’ve found that’s the difference…being able to intentionally capture things like motion and depth of field, as opposed to it just being an accident. You can control whether or not you see motion by using a slower shutter speed.
If your camera lets you operate in aperture priority mode, I would suggest that you try shooting in aperture mode and learn a bit about exposure (controlled by aperture and shutter speed), which will let you control more how you capture subjects.
I’d say those three subjects are the first to tackle.
Finally, it’s good to have manual mode to eventually use, but for 80% of your pictures, aperture priority should suffice.
Sorry if you already know all this. I hope there’s something in my post for you.
I think I took that well before I had any knowledge of inclination beyond snapshots, but it is still a good example of something I would try to capture now.
That was on purpose… They were turning their heads back and forth quickly, and the one in the middle sent up a flurry of hair every time; I though it’s be cool to capture.
Yeah, that’s been a major PITA; trying to find the balance between exposure time and a clear picture of motion. Witness thesepictures, incidentally of the same performer.
I didn’t know any of this. Well, except that slower shutter=brighter pic. Do not hesitate to tell me things in captain dummy-speak.
I’m not a good enough photographer to lend an opinion on your craft. I CAN offer up the following:
Do what you like, like what you do…and be damned with others’ opinion.
Spend any time over at photo.net and it can get downright discouraging. The photography can be absolutely ethereal, the commentary excessively vitreolic.
Take LOTS of pictures. As you do, you’ll pick up what you like and what you don’t. What works and what doesn’t. And as others have said, find kindered spirits, they can greatly assist.
I’m not the best mechanic, race car driver, photographer, parent, or brewmeister…doesn’t mean I’d prefer being criticized about it.
I will once again recommend Shuttercity as a place to post photos and get friendly, helpful feedback. Like most shooters, you have some good and some not-so-good.
I want to say this before I look at any of your pictures, so this comment is in no way personal. If you are good, you won’t have to ask. It’s the same for everything, if you are experienced and knowledgeable you will be able to take the criteria with which you judge others and apply it to yourself. If you have to ask a question as broad as “Am I any good?” you probably lack the experience needed to show your real skill anyway. If you are truly interested I would suggest you learn as much as you can about photography, especially composition and try to answer that question yourself.
Now that I’ve seen your pictures… you should pay more attention to composition. You might notice I emphasised it earlier too. Composition is very, very important. You can usually tell the difference between an experienced photographer and a newbie by how they compose their shots. You might get people telling you to forget the rules and do what you like. I’d like you to ignore them. While some of the best shots don’t follow any rules, you need to know them to break them. Both E. E. Cummings and your average AOLer use unorthodox grammar and punctuation, but you can very easily differentiate between the two because one has a solid grounding in fundamentals and the other doesn’t.
While we’re on that subject, check out some photography magazines. They have articles on a range of different subjects and often run features on specific things like, say, photographing flowers, or city scenes, or night photography, or new and snazzy things to do with a digital camera/infrared film/filters. Basically, you learn things and might be inspired to try new things. A magazine we get here called Better Photography has a section in the back where readers send it their (amateur) photos to be critiqued by the staff. I really like that section because they often pick up on things most people wouldn’t notice, and offer a lot of advice (and okay, sometimes they just rip a photo to shreds). If you want to put your photos on a photography site make sure the photographers are of a high calibre; the critique might be harsh but it’s better than growing complacent and picking up bad habits because you’ll always get compliments whatever you do. Good luck.
I’d like to ask a related question. Is a degree in photography a neccesity for a professional photographer? At photo school will they actually teach you how to find work as a professional, or is it strictly learning how to take good photos? I’m just curious as to whether my time would be best spent going to school or getting a job that pays the bills and submitting portfolios.
I’m a relatively involved amateur photography student (local community-college classes, and I think I’ll be taking one at Columbia (downtown Chicago, not NYC) this summer.
IANAPPhotographer, but I think a lesson from one of my first composition classes woudl be germane here.
Subject.
In a “good” (all is relative) picture, something draws the eye. On your landscapes (personally, the toughest for me, for this reason), it’s good to have a focal point to draw attention. On your blanket of fog, it mightbe better to have a building in the right-most third as your main focus, and the blanket of fog rolling in, filling your left field. (IMHO)
I thouht the Lucky 13 was a very nice shot, but may have suffered from too mant focal points. There’s SO much going on that my eye rattled around like a pinball (figuratively, not literally). Get a main focus in 1/3, and then a secondary in 1/5.
Now, if a pro comes along and tells me I’mfull of hooey, that’s fine…I’m just relaying what I’ve learned from teaching (and real-life) pros, and what looks good to me.