critiques, comments and advice...

[Jim Walczak]

Greetings All!
I'm not really sure this is the correct forum to post this, but since it was labled for "critiques" it seemed like a good place to start! I would like to invite everyone to take a look at my gallery and post some opinions on my work. I recently got a new camera (an Olympus C-4000) and have started taking my photogrphy interests a little more seriously and am possibly considering persueing a career in the field of photography.

I would very much like to improve my work. While I've never really had any "pro" training, I have been reading books, watching "how to" videos, looking at other peoples work and doing research online. I find this to be good inspiration but I'm not really sure it's helping my "techinique" (for lack of a better word). One of the issues I'm really having is (particularly in reference to books and videos) most of the stuff I'm seeing thats really impressive to me is usually of exotic locations which I don't have access or opportunity to travel too. Looking at pics of The Grand Canyon or pics taken by people on safai in Africa doesn't really give me a good perspective on my own work.

One of the main reasons I signed up here at BytePhoto (aside from having some place to post pics! ) was to learn and improve my photography. I'm looking for critiques, comments, suggestions, opinions...basically some good honest critisizm on my work. Whats good about the pics, whats bad, what could have made the pictures better etc.. Newbies and pro alike please feel free to post comments...I'm open to any and all feedback on my work. As I recently stated in another thread, I know what looks good "to me" but I'm not sure if it's any where near "pro" work let alone marketable material.

Instead of posting individual pics here and to save some time, my gallery is;

http://www.bytephoto.com/photopost/s...hp?ppuser=1839

I'm looking for comments primarily on the first three pages (at 12 pics per page). My older stuff is mostly candid's I shot of my critters around the house as well as some of my graphics work and I'm not really worried about that stuff...basically looking for opinions on everything more recent then "Yellow Flower". Also please feel free to ignore the astrophotography shots...it's something else that I'm working on but not really relivant to the info I'm seeking on my work at the moment.

As always, I'm grateful for your collective wisdom, experience and opinions!

Bright Blessings & Gentle Breezes,
Jim

[SMcEvoy]

Jim, you've got some nice shots on your site. I went through quite a few of them. Although you said ignore your astrophotography shots, they're really super. I also really like the abstract patterns.

The biggest challenge I see with your photos is lighting, and that will come. I found when I first got both my SLR, and now my DiMage Z1, if I went to the same place in the garden at different times of the day, I could really see a difference in how light affected my photos. You've got some lovely (if seasonally early ) shots of red leaves. Get a bit of warm light on them giving them a glow and they'll jump right out at you and help you toward your possible goal of becoming a photographer.

Kodak has some neat - but simple tips for adding to your composition skills. http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQueri...q-locale=en_US

Anyway, hope that's of some help. Suzan

[Jim Walczak]

Thanks Suzan!
I'm really grateful for your input and have read the comments you had posted. I agree that one of my biggest issues is lighting (and respectively shade). A number of my shots were taking either in shaded woods or when the sun was up high or simply on a cloudy day, so yes, part of it has really been my timing. I know that some "fill" flash might have helped a couple of these but I'm still tryin to "wrangle" the flash on this new camera to add effect...a decent hand held TTL flash unit is on my "wish list" (LOL). Another problem I had was simple absent mindedness...I had gone out the day after I shot those sunset pics and I had bumped the exposure balance down a bit for those and forgot to reset it the next day. As a result most of the pics I shot the next day came out really dark, but it did allow the "happy accident" of the pic titled "Blue"...I don't think that pic would have been as nice with the normal camera settings. I'm also having a problem with grainyness on some of the pics (such as Lorain Lighthouse) but I know that is, in part at least, from using the digital zoom on this camera...once I get past the optical zoom limits, the quality drops quite a bit with magnification (especially with low light levels)...a telephoto lens is also on my wish list.

The astrophotography shots are one of the reasons that I went with this particular camera (the Olympus C-4000)...it was about the only one in my price range that had enough shutter time along with the ISO 400 equiv to get some decent "space shots". I'm starting to rig my scope to do "eye piece projection" shots (where I shoot thru the eye piece of the scope) and will eventually get a t-adapter as well for prime focus astrophotography. This is something I'm just really starting to get into but my results so far are quite encouraging . Hopefully by the time the clear winter skys roll around, I'll have things figured out and will be able to get some nice shots of stuff like the Orion Nebula. Once I "cut my teeth" a little with digital astrophotography, I may even switch back to my Canon 35mm for some nice long exposure shots (and with astrophotography, that can mean single shots up to 30 minutes or more!). I'd really like to get a Canon D10 for that work, but the price range is just way beyond my reach for the moment.

Anyways, thanks again for your comments and suggestions. As a graphic artist, "light" has always been my nemisis...that seems like the big area I'm really going to have to work on with photography as well. I can compensate for some of my short comings in Photoshop (when I know what they are) but as they say, the best way to fix a problem is to avoid creating the problem in the first place.

Bright Blessings,
Jim

BTW...I just put up a gallery at Photobucket.com as well. I have a number of shots posted there that I don't have here (as well as some duplicates)...feel free to take a look and let me know what you think when you have a few minutes to spare. Just search under lomitus1 and thats my gallery .