Help Me Pick A Photo
 

Ok I got a SLR last year for my birthday and have been taking a few photos with it during the last year. I have no training so most are crap. Just for fun I have decided to enter some of the photos in the State Fair in a few weeks. I don't expect to win, but I think it will be fun to at least enter. So I have picked the photos I think are my best (I know that says a lot for the rest of the crap I must have taken) and want all your help narrowing it down to 3. So let me know which in the lot you all think are the 3 best, thanks.

Photo #1
 

Here is Photo #1.

Photo #2
 

And #2

Photo #3
 

#3

Photo #4
 

#4

Photo #5
 

#5

Photo #6
 

#6

Photo #7
 

#7

Photo #8
 

Last but not least.

I thought they were all good but I gotta go with image 1 and image 6. Image one looks like lonliness and image 6 looks like cold. I love it! good job! I like image 7, too, but for some reason I like image 1 a little better. Just my preference.

6, 8, and the shitter.

I'm with Brianna...if you can enter them all, do it! But if not, I'd go for 2,3,4,6 and 8. And of those, 2, 6 and 8.

Several of these are really good. In order of my favorite to least favorite:
6, 7, 1, 4, 2, 3, 8, 5

I like 4, 5, and 6

2, 3, and 4 really caught my eye.

A lot of you like 6. I had another version of 7 I liked better but I cant crop it the way it needs to be without loosing important stuff. Here it is just for fun. Alan's dad runs a recking yard and there are some really neat old cars out there. Most are just the shell of the car now but they are still pretty cool. Thats where #1 and 7 were taken.

My favorites are 5, 6, and 8

I'm narrowing my vote to number 6. Besides being truly beautiful, I think it's a popular winner.

I really like 4, 5 and 6. 4 looks very professional, and perfectly centered, too!

all good subject matter. i especially like #6 due to the perspective.

in future shoots you may be happier with your results if you don't put your subject in the center of the shot. divide your frame into thirds and generally your best shot will result from putting your subject offcenter - pretty much on one of the lines dividing it into thirds. it just changes your photos from being nice shots with excellent subjects to being really great photos.

just my 2 cents.

Thanks Lookout! I want to take some classes at some point, but that is a little while in the future before we can afford them. Community college classes are real expensive here so even just one class will run me about $300. Thanks again Lookout for the tip.

Take a ton of pictures that aren't snapshots.

This will be a lot better than taking a class which will teach you how to take pictures that are just like everybody else's pictures ... develop your own style based on fun and abandon.

If your "good" camera is film, get a cheap digital and start clicking. Being able to do your "processing" yourself, essentially for free, will allow you to take more pics and will reduce the learning curve. Have the good camera with you in case you see that "perfect shot".

(FWIW, I learned on a plastic 120 camera, eventually upgraded to a 35mm (Pentax K1000 which I still have and still works great, and I use more often than the succession of automatic cameras, including an Advanced Photo System camera I found very frustrating. At least I never succumbed to the lure of the disk film format. The ease of digital is seductive, though)

1,5,6, and the row of old cars you posted later. are there any specific catagories ?

2

They have a certain group depending on your experience level. In my case I am an amateur. From there I can enter 3 photos TOTAL conforming to the following categories.
Action
Animals/Pets (domestic)
Architecture
Commercial & Industrial
Creative Art
Flowers
Human Interest
Humor
Macro (close up)
Panorama
Portraiture - Children & Babies
Portraiture - Female/Male
Portraiture - Groups
Scenic - including "The Hand Of Man" *
Scenic - excluding "The Hand Of Man"
Sports
Still Life
Unclassified
Wedding/Social Event
Wildlife - In the wild
Wildlife - In captivity

* "The hand of man" refers to anything in the image that is man made - for example, a fence, road, structure, etc.

So there are a few categories but I was having a hard time choosing which 3 to enter so thats why I asked for everyones opinion.

that is awesome wolf - the K1000 is a real workhorse. mine finally gave up the ghost last year. it is still fixable, but i don't shoot enough any more to justify it.

wolf has some great advice in there that i was going to add, but she beat me to it.

DON'T take classes at this point - they will only teach you textbook crap and will focus entirely on the technical side to the detriment of the art/aesthetic (sp) side.

DON'T think you have to spend a lot of money to get started. my favorite body is still a Nikon 6006 - pretty old, but sufficient for my needs (i don't do sports or action shots). a couple of lenses should be enough and at this point you don't have to buy name branc. Ritz camera's Quantaray lense is a Sigma. decent glass for the price, just not the fastest in the world. they all do that.

DO frequent several of the nicer camera shops in your area. it is really generic, but for a chains, Ritz, Kitz, and Wolf generally do a good job of hiring photo nuts. you can get great advice from them and if yuo hang around for awhile they will treat you right on the cost of supplies. plus they develop their film on site and can color correct, etc.

DO subscribe to Outdoor Photographer and read it. be inspired by it. Galen died, but they still have great folks there. you can also get great deals on film etc, by ordering from some of the advertisers.

Do pick specific films you like to work with and stick with them. personally i shoot Fuji Velvia (slide), or regular old Kodak 100 B&W. part of this is making sure the film you shoot works well with the paper and chemicals your photoshop works with. that really does matter. if you are just burning through color film, trying to figure out what works and doesn't i would suggest AGFA, nice price, good quality.

Do take many shots of the same thing at different settings. if possible, right down your settings for each frame, that way you can learn what each one is really doing for you.

Do learn a couple of basic filters.

DO have a lot of fun and don't get discouraged.

DO post your shots here occasionally.

and yes, i know there are better photographers than myself who reside in the cellar who may suggest other things, but what i have suggested does work well for a beginner.

I see something good in all of the photos...sorry, can't pick just one (or three).

Well, ok I'll try:

Numbers 2,4,5,6..oops that's four. :p

As far as taking classes for cheap, try looking into your local community centers. In 1991, I happen to notice an ad in my local City Paper for the Howard County Arts Center. They were advertising photography classes. I think I paid all of $100 bucks for several weeks worth of classes. Granted, when I shoot, I pay no attention to what I have learned in class (b/c most of the time I find myself shooting on the fly...no time to think about technique), but I did learn the basics. Plus, it was in a nice small intimate setting and got plenty of teacher time.

Just an idea. Good luck. :thumbsup:

Alan got me a nice Minolta Maxxum 5 and a 28-70mm lens for my birthday last year. I had the option to get a nice digital camera but I really wanted to have an SLR to play around with. It sucks not knowing if my shots have turned out good but I really like the SLR so it works out better for me in the end. After taking photos with it and such I realized I needed a longer lens. I love to take photos of old barns and wildlife and the 28-70 lens just wasn't letting me get close enough. For Christmas I asked for a 70-200mm lens. Its a Quantaray and is a great lens. While there have been a few times I wished I had a even bigger lens it does the job real well 90% of the time.


I actually have had a subscription to this mag. for almost a year now. I love it! They have great tip on how to take certain photos and always feature some place that is great to go to take photos. I see their photo workshop things in the magazine each month and think how much fun it would be to go on one of those.

Thats something I need to start doing. I fool around with different settings and such when taking photos but then I forget to write down what setting I used for what photo. By the time I get the prints back I cant remember what setting I had the camera on for the better shot. I just need to go buy one of those little note pads and keep it in the Camera bag.

Outside of high school, the only time that I have taken a photography "class" was at a local adult school, and that was primarily to get access to the B&W darkroom (which was the same one I'd learned on in high school, so I could already find my way around in the dark when I was loading film on reels to develop). The (now defunct) adult school offered several "how to take better pictures" classes that were a pre-req for the Darkroom Photography class that I ended up taking ... but I knew the guy who was teaching the Darkroom class (he was an industrial arts teacher at my high school) and he wrote me an override to skip the "for dummies" point and shoot sections. What ultimately happened is that they should have been paying me co-instructor fees because there were several students in the class that were bewildered by things like contact sheets and test-strips, so I was half doing my own work and half helping out.

Other great magazines to consider:

Shutterbug
http://www.shutterbug.net/
I went to my first trade show after reading this mag. Got some pretty cool deals on some filters and grabbed up a ton of information.
so if you see one coming to your area, I would go and check it out.

Photographic
http://www.photographic.com/
Just an all around great photo mag.

good ideas Lsyc.

outdoor pho... was the only one i subscribed to, but i worked in a camera store so i did get to read the rest.

what i did is get all of the backpacking and mountainclimbing mags and just studied what they had in there. also travel brochures are great.

i think for most people technique is easy to learn, composition is the hard part for many. the whole art vs science thing.

1, 2 & 7. 2 because I think it's a good, if depressing, picture. 1 & 7 because they gave me a woody. I want to visit that junkyard. :D
Do you realize 7 contains what appears to be, not 1 but 2, '55 Chevy 2 DOOR station wagons. Inconceivable! :eek:

I'd say 4, 5, and 6.

I really like #4. It justs gives a neat feeling. Kind of like deja vu...

6 and 7 :thumbsup: