Bolerus said:
2) why woudl you crop the swan tighter, wouldnt you then lose the sense of position?
when i look at it , the swan is taking up a lot of space vertically, hence my feeling it would look better as a portrait shot
the rest of the shot is water and doesnt give any sense of position or scale, the water isnt really that interesting and so i would get rid of a load of it , if it had lots of colours and glistening highlights then it would look better, also if the shot included the whole of the slight reflection of the swan the shot would give more interest
Bolerus said:
3) well that was my attempt at 3rds rule, idea was the space was to show that the duck (or watever it is??) was moving into space. I guess that didnt work. Again I could crop away some of the left of the frame so to remove the space.
i understand the idea, but it doesnt really show it well, as theres no sense that the duck is moving, and again, theres too much water there for me
Bolerus said:
and number 4) I see what you mean about the water, how would I change that, is it a camera setting I have wrong (i am using a olympus c-740, so while it is a point and click, it does have fully manual mode so I can change things - although I havent figured everything out) Also, how would I crop the background duck out, with out losing the focusing duck?
Also what is a circular polarizer? or is that a Dslr thing?
basically your camera is exposing the duck properly, but because of that, the background is getting overexposed and blown out
you could try lowering or raising the camera a little to change the angle so you capture less of the highlights, or a circ polarizer , which is a filter that can cut out highlights from water, etc- its mainly an SLR piece of kit but some compacts might have a kit ?
Bolerus said:
I have read a thing on the rule of thirds, and to be honest Whilst I can see its use in certain situations, I can't see how they would apply to single target static targets.
I didn't want to show a perspective or imply movement (although I did try on pic 3)
Maybe I read but didnt understand the "rule" but doesnt a "you must do this with every photgraph" take the fun out of it all?
Never heard of "the goldon mean" what is that one?
the rule of thirds is a basic principal , you dont have to follow it at all ,although a lot of shots will look a lot better using it , and some will look better because youve broken it
ive no idea how to explain the golden mean , you would be best looking it up on google
your light levels ,etc look fine, although the shots look like they were taken on a dull overcast day? maybe try shooting at sunset and sunrise on a decent day, so theres more exciting light and colours
at the end of the day, its all a learning process, and the way to get better is to keep shooting
The very basic idea is that the focus of your shot is positioned a third of the way across the shot. In a lot of cases, this makes a 'factual' photograph (straight forward) into something arty. Give it a go.
