I like the pier pic. What was done in post processing?
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Messed highlights and shadows, upper the clarity and contrast. It's basically a single exposure HDR.


I have to repost the picture of my wife at the beach, I deleted it because I noticed the hair tie on her wrist. Hair tie gone now.
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Nice work, Justin!
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I'm seldom satisfied with my photos. What do I need to do to improve them?
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Post some examples Ron so we can get a feel for them and tell us what it is that u dislike
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I will tell you only what I know, and what I didn't learn from 30 years in television,
I have been learning lately from reading all of this

There are enough articles in there to keep you busy for weeks. After you have read about half of it,
you realize that on one hand, the guy is extremely knowledgable and helpful, and on the other hand,
he IS ONLY one photographer, and they tend to be opinionated and think they are right all the time.
Like me.
But if you can remember he is only one guy, his help is invaluable and insightful. If you want to just
skip RIGHT TO WHY you can't take good pictures, you might find the most immediate help in the articles
that have those types of titles. He is very blunt about why most people take boring pictures and strives
to help you break out of that mold. Some people here may really benefit from this library of help,
some may even toss him a few bucks or buy gear through the links he supplies to help him avoid working
a real job ever again. Very little in there is what I would term useless.

Good luck with your quest to take better photos. I think we all want that. You should create a photobucket
or flickr page where we can check out the things you are talking about. Flickr is not the best choice because
it is usually a pride and criticism kind of environment. Photobucket is more useful for, well, like a lot of us do here,
store photos that we like to post in threads and stuff, where the pics don't clog up the asylum servers. Stuff
like this.......

Image

But also stuff like this.....

Image

On Photobucket though, there are not the same kinds of review and criticism, so its a little safer to store
things there that you might want people here to help you with. When I say criticism, too, I do not mean
just BAD stuff, I mean Flickr is a place where people want others to see and comment on their work. If you
want to store things on the bucket, you can use their html tags to post them here like I did with my Smokies
stream shot, and we can look at what bothers you and aid you in stopping it, lol.

.
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That may not be a bad place to be in. As long as your dissatisfaction doesn't discourage you too much. There is SO much info on the internet that it will be good, but possibly overwhelming. I highly suggest that you search for camera clubs or societies in your area and attend a meeting or two. You'll likely find some very passionate folks eager to help.

http://www.photo-ne.com/biglist/page13.htm
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I agree with Dave, too. If you are not TOTALLY dejected, then striving to find ways to take better pictures
is about as healthy a place to be in as you could be. Satisfaction and complacency in any art form is a death
sentence for creativity. If you want to improve, you probably will. Read this as a start.
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Another thing to note, I doubt seriously you will find many people posting anything anywhere on the net
that has not been jacked up with Photoshop or at least touched by it in some way. More brilliant colors can
be had with polarizing filters, but a lot of people can't help messing with everything in Photoshop, BECAUSE
THEY CAN, frankly. I know I don't post anything that I haven't adjusted in SOME way. Digital changed everything.
So if you feel your pics don't stack up to other photos that are essentially the same, it might also be that you have
some post-processing to do to make yourself more satisfied. HDR is all the rage now, taking everything out of the
shadows and blasting away with the electric color. I like about 1 out of every 20 HDR photos I see. I think I
am stuck in the past, where life looks normal on a photograph, because there was no such thing as HDR processing.
I will admit I really, REALLY like it when it adds to the photo. But for my narrow taste, it often doesn't.

And look at me. I wanted the photo of the Alum Cave Trail above to be just like I saw it with my eye, so I polarized
it on the camera, then took it to Photoshop and boosted the saturation til it was EXACTLY like I saw it. Then I added
more, lol. So remember, do as I say, not as I do . :-)
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Image
Crystal vignette by emopunker2004, on Flickr

Image
IMG_1490 by emopunker2004, on Flickr
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I guess my main problem is I'm highly critical of myself, regardless of what I do. lol! I'm a perfectionist. I already understand the basics: f-stop, shutter speed, depth of field, the rule of thirds, optical filters, etc. IMO I need to practice more on the subject matter to make my pics more interesting. Then again, what pics that I take that I may deem boring may be raved about by someone else.

I use a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28 camera, which is nice but it's limited in what it can do.
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Care to share any Ron?
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Image
hmm2-3 by emopunker2004, on Flickr

Image
hmm by emopunker2004, on Flickr
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I will agree with you that that Lumix is a good camera, and I think I am one of the only people on this thread
that had a LOOOOoong history of shooting super-zooms and posting that stuff here, too. There is a preponderence
of DSLRs here. Those cameras prove that a person can still take a good photo with ANY camera. I bought my sister
a FZ18 a few months ago because I believe in superzooms as an upgrade to compact point and shoots, despite
them basically both having the same sensor. I believe if you want to take nice photos, you need to be able to
turn a few knobs. Those Lumix cameras have very nice lenses, and they TRY like hell, like Fuji, to shoot as well
as possible in low light. If you DO know the ins and outs of light control, then concentrate heavily on
composition, MOSTLY remembering that anything in a photo that is not adding to the composition is taking away
from it. MOVE your body, not your zoom all the time, take a dozen photos of the same thing from 6-10 different spots.
I can't help you with the hyper-criticism, and like Emo said, if you can't show us a few photos you hate, we can't be
of much help. Share, my man.
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[Image
Fall Mosaic by MemphisBrad, on Flickr]

This is one of my favorite photos I have taken, but it is not a 'good' photo. It is only fair.
You can SEE easily that had I walked to the right a few feet and recomposed, it could have
been EPIC. Instead you see brown, ugly vines and the back of a building. You can SEE that
the other BG would have been nice fall colors. Ehh...it was a picture, I saw it and took it.
I didn't THINK to take 10 pics of it. My mistake. But I LOVE IT. If I don't love a photo,
it doesn't go on my Flickr pages. I use Photobucket for the CRAP I shoot, lol.
But my photos on Flickr are pleasing to ME, and if other people like seeing them I am happy,
and if they compliment them, I am happy, but they are up there to store and share the ones
I LIKE, and somewhat to compete with my friend Jesse, who I think has a REAL flair for seeing through a lens.
He probably hates that I even HAVE a Flickr page, I only did it because of how HIS photos
made me FEEL. I wanted to feel like that about my own photos. Go through all your stuff
in thumbnail size and see if at least ten photos JUMP off the screen at thumbnail size.
Post em up on the bucket or on flickr and share em. Share a few with us. It is obvious
you WANT some form of help or advice, so you have to prepare to GET IT, good or bad.
You can't hover on the egde.
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Awesome SHOTS Thank You !!!
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I am sorry, Shark, I completely forgot to remember who I was talking to. You and I hung out at the Shack.
I have been way off my game for a long time. I remember your camera and everything. Now that I have the face
together with the issues, I am even leaning further in. Very interested to know the kinds of things you are shooting that
you don't care for.
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Let's start with this one. Give me an honest critique, other than the foreground grassy area is overexposed:


Image
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Ron, it's a great shot overall. If u had that image in a RAW file, the overexposed foreground could be fixed easily.
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yeah, RAW files are pretty convenient!
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