it's amazing how many people ask for criticism and then bitch about what they get

i'd say that the majority of the feedback that people receive in here is constructive, if not always positive...yes, sometimes people will knock your technique (Kiwi crop, anyone? ) in a way that represents pure opinion rather than objective critiquing, but that's the nature of the beast

in fact, given this is tww in general and chit chat in particular, this thread has remained pretty civil and useful for quite a while

5/10/2010 7:33:30 AM

EAT A DICK, QUAG!

(jk )

5/10/2010 8:46:53 AM

It's like one big family up in here!

5/10/2010 10:26:13 AM

i've always appreciated feedback on my pictures...granted, i rarely post anything that i'm not proud of, and my tastes in photography lean more toward good composition than post-processing, but i like to hear back from those who have more experience than myself

it's up to me not to get pissy about the responses and whether to make changes based on that feedback...you know, like an adult

5/10/2010 10:28:16 AM

alright...so i took everyone's advice...and for now ditched the hdr stuff. figure i better figure out how to take good pictures first. any ways here's one i took of the same place but strait and without any editing (its behind my parents house back home).

is there anything yaw would do editing-wise to this photo?


[Edited on May 10, 2010 at 11:31 AM. Reason : .]

5/10/2010 11:30:42 AM

Zombies...

5/10/2010 11:46:50 AM

I'd probably go explore the barn, but I like taking pictures of old shit.

5/10/2010 12:39:48 PM

^^^ To that photo in particular, not really.

My comments come from the picture taking side, as opposed to the editing side.

I'd say trying playing with your f/ stop to see what you can get with the barn in focus and the background slightly blurred, or the other way around, zoom in, focus on the tree line, get the barn in the frame but blurred out of focus.

Another "tool" to improve/change the picture would be the daylight. With no clouds in the sky, you are going to lose definition in the grass. Try taking it at dawn/dusk/sunset to get some different color effects on the grass and the barn.

It took me about 3 months of just playing with my camera to fully understand what it could do and how to do it (without post editing)

5/10/2010 1:22:58 PM

Just picked up a Sony alpha a230. My first DSLR. I am pretty sure I am going to go exchange it for the Nikkon D3000 for the simple fact my mom has a D5000 and we would be able to share lenses. What are the opinions on the Sony vs Nikkon? I like the Sony so far, just like the idea of being able to share lenses. Any others you would recommend in the <$500 range?

These are from the first night playing with the camera. No post adjustments. All done with the kit lens.

5/10/2010 1:23:39 PM

^I like my Sony, but I got a KILLER deal on it, and I didn't have the money to go Nikon or Canon.

5/10/2010 1:27:47 PM

juicedgsr95, just get some HDR software and HDR those mothers with about 1000 different exposure adjustments and they will all be super awesome. If you want, you can tilt your camera about 45 degrees to make them perfect.

5/10/2010 1:36:34 PM

Shit. And here I was thinking we were past that stuff.

5/10/2010 1:46:43 PM

Shit. And here I was thinking we were past that stuff.

5/10/2010 3:45:02 PM

are you really TA of the year? and do you always back into parking spots, or just right after you wash your car?

5/10/2010 7:16:08 PM

I'm thinking those aren't his cars... in any case. The TA is driving a pretty nice car for being a "poor" TA...

5/11/2010 12:39:52 AM

Saw this on the street and had to take a picture. That is exactly how I found it.

5/11/2010 8:00:55 AM

^ reminds me of this doll i found a few years ago when i was wandering around centennial woods (before the alumni center was built, actually)

5/11/2010 8:02:42 AM

now that is just creepy.

5/11/2010 8:14:42 AM

it was near the lakeshore, though far enough up and on a log that i can't believe it washed up there...i swear, i thought it was a dead baby at first

5/11/2010 8:19:38 AM

I just got the camera and found an empty parking lot close to home. The G is mine and the Z is a friends. My car stays clean son, garage and home, parking deck at work, and no rain makes that easy! I dont back into spots, I park in the back, door dings are the devil!

5/11/2010 8:40:03 AM

Let's talk straps. What does everyone use? I was thinking of making myself one of these:

http://www.ceoblues.com/archive/2008/november/theultralight

5/11/2010 8:49:44 AM

I got this for Christmas this past year. Not bad. It's a camera strap.

5/11/2010 9:05:16 AM

I don't like that Rapid straps or whatever use the 1/4" tripod mount. Makes me uncomfortable only having one connection point. I do need a longer strap, though.

5/11/2010 9:12:47 AM

Happy (belated) Mother's Day!

5/11/2010 10:13:25 AM

Got a photo question for ya'll. A friend that is into photography (amateur, mainly just portaits and shit) went to another girls wedding, and the other girl had asked her to do some photography work. She wasn't getting paid for this or nothing, just shooting to see what she could get of one of her closest friends. They had a paid photographer there too to get the "real" shots. The friend came back home after the wedding and posted up some of her pics on FB like she usually does. But she took the down last night, and when everybody asked, she said the "pro" photographer told her to take them down and that she couldn't post those.

I responded and told her that while I haven't really done a lot of paid jobs, I have never been somewhere like a wedding where the paid photographer has ever told me what I could do with my own fucking pictures. I told her she should tell him to stick his camera up his ass. Have you ever been told not to post shit, or told somebody else to? I could maybe understand if he was posing folks and she was sitting on his shoulder snapping pictures that he did the work for, or if she was blatantly reposting his pictures or scanning proofs or some shit. But if she just got the bride and snapped pictures from her own camera doing her own poses, what gives him the right to send a shitty e-mail to her telling her to yank them? Have you ever heard of shit like this??

5/11/2010 12:10:48 PM

unless there was some sort of exclusivity clause in the contract that the couple signed with the photographer - post the pictures

5/11/2010 1:39:51 PM

^How far does that extend? I can understand a pro not wanting to have somebody else "competing" so to speak, but shit these days everybody has a camera. Does it just cover SLRs, all dedicated cameras, or if somebody puts their damn cameraphone pics on Facebook, can they get bitched at too?

5/11/2010 1:45:28 PM

i can't read the contract from where i'm sitting

5/11/2010 1:46:19 PM

fuck a photographer like that

i specifically asked the photographers doing our wedding if they minded if some friends who were "amateurs" as well (they really are, they just have big cameras...y'all know how it is ) took pictures at the wedding, making sure they understood that none of them were pros, none of them were being paid, and none of them would get in their way

they laughed said of course they didn't mind, they like the idea of having as many photographers as possible

the only thing that comes close to what the photographer above did was that my photographers are going to sell us the unedited digital negatives individually if we find some we want, but we have to get permission before putting up the unedited files (or posting any that we edit ourselves)...THIS i understand because if i choose images that the photographers don't feel represent their work (their work being not just the photography, but the post-processing), or i trash an image and post it as their work, it reflects negatively on them

[Edited on May 11, 2010 at 3:27 PM. Reason : .]

5/11/2010 3:26:18 PM

Quote :

" I don't like that Rapid straps or whatever use the 1/4" tripod mount. Makes me uncomfortable only having one connection point. I do need a longer strap, though."

With a normal strap, if one side fails, the camera still falls.

I have a black rapid rs-7 and love it. I hate neck straps as I just find them uncomfortable all the way around so I used a hand strap until 4-5 weeks ago. The BR is great since the weight is on your shoulder and the camera is out of the way. I quit using the tripod mount since I didn't like having to remove the "safety"of the strap to use a tripod. I now use a braided length of parachute cord (550 lb. Strength) that runs through the strap mount on my battery grip. If you're interested in this style, check out the Sun Sniper as well. It's supposed to be a more refined Black Rapid.

5/11/2010 7:48:50 PM

I stopped by southeastern today and got myself the black rapid rs-5. I dig it so far.

5/11/2010 8:08:29 PM

I had one of the camera straps that goes on the tripod, the sniper one. Its ok if you are using a light lens, like a 24-105, but anything bigger and the weight of the camera + lens will hit your lower back constantly when you run (and I run a lot with my gear), which annoys the shit out of me; since it runs a little lower than normal straps. It's pretty worthless with using a supertele like my 400 2.8.

As far as the wedding photographer asking you to take down the pictures, fuck him/her. I highly doubt the photographer had any sort of contract of clause about being the sole person to cover the event, unless the wedding was a huge ass 100k+ wedding of where the photograph costs a cool 10k+. But it the photog is one of those "normal" decent ones of where its just average stuff and flat lighting, then ignore him and keep the pics up. If the photog feels as though he feels threaten, then he's not doing a good enough job to differentiate his level of photography compared to amateur stuff. Anyone can walk around with a 5d and a 50 1.4 and get some good stuff, but the ones that understand composition, lighting, and go out and beyond by setting up and understanding how to work the event, that will keep the distance between someone who is just fucking around and a pro. Of the weddings I've shot, I treated it like a commercial shot and directed people and used studio lights to get what I want. It may have inconvienced people, but I personally would rather spend the extra 30 mins in setup and get awesome pics then having ok shit.

As an upcoming pro shooter I think that our ability to understand lighting and using it will still keep us in the game compared to people who just put a flash on the camera with a cheapo gary fong and make ok pictures. I'm still guilty of making some crappy flat pictures, but usually are the kind of moment POS pics, nothing extra ordinary.

5/11/2010 10:59:28 PM

I took the following photo this last weekend. It is of my sister's 2 dogs. Geronimo in front and Abby in the background.
I actually did not think it turned out at first but thankfully it ended up looking pretty good

5/11/2010 11:05:33 PM

wow... you miss focused on both dogs... at least the color is in focus...

5/11/2010 11:46:26 PM

Yea JBaz, this was a nice wedding, but knowing the family of the girl who got married, they didn't drop $texas on it.

I believe she got married in Raleigh, so I can't wait to see what the "pro" shot and what their name is. I'll be sure to let ya'll know who this dickbag is.

5/12/2010 6:19:52 AM

so did you tell them to tell him to go fuck himself and put the photos back on fb?

5/12/2010 6:32:10 AM

I'll be getting a D90 in the next couple weeks. Does anyone know someone who would be interested in purchasing a D40 kit w/ 18-55 and 55-200 lenses?

5/12/2010 1:46:31 PM

if only you had of asked that like 3 days ago...i would have jumped all over it

5/12/2010 2:27:21 PM

We did. I and a couple of other guys that do photography fulltime said the same thing. Fuck that guy and put them back up. She doesn't want to rock the boat though, so she said she is going to wait until he posts his pics and then she'll put hers back up.

5/12/2010 2:42:54 PM

moral of the story....only be friends with actual 'friends' on facebook

5/12/2010 2:46:49 PM

I was kinda wondering who the hell the nosy fucking photographer was that was digging around through this chicks FB page. Its not like she did a spread either. She had like a folder of 5-8 pictures up, and most of them were just like "artsy" shots. One picture zoomed up on the brides face. The rest of them could have been from damn near any wedding because they didn't show a single part of the wedding itself. I think this chick was a bridesmaid, so obviously she couldn't shoot in the middle of the wedding. She got some shit before and after.

5/12/2010 3:04:39 PM

not exactly Digital, but I'll throw these in here














[Edited on May 12, 2010 at 9:07 PM. Reason : ]

5/12/2010 8:41:03 PM

^ whatd you take those with?

5/12/2010 11:32:17 PM

^35mm vivitar with kodak 100 B/W film. i'm a broke ass grad student.

Quote :

"is there anything yaw would do editing-wise to this photo?"

just as a suggestion, i would probably crop some of the sky. although i would recommend doing this when taking the picture. i think the picture would be stronger with less sky and more field, particularly because the sky is just a plain blue. maybe tilt the camera down a bit. i had a photo professor who would get upset with students who "cut the picture in half" with a center horizon line, because there would only be information on one half of the picture. unless there are some interesting cloud formations, or sunset conditions, you don't really gain anything with all the extra sky in the picture.

[Edited on May 12, 2010 at 11:39 PM. Reason : ]

5/12/2010 11:37:15 PM

you'd want 1/3 or use the golden rule for landscape pics which is like 1/4. Oh who cares, if there's a main dominate feature in the mix, isn't like horribly boring, then its fine for flickr.

How long ago was the wedding? How many days will the photog have it up? I can tell you that if a wedding photo does nothing but photography, I can get my shit up in a few hours (I can thank the folks at UPI, Getty, AP and presswire for drilling the fast processing time). Nothing like going through a 1k of pics of an event, pic 20, caption, process, edit and upload in 20 mins to get the stress going.

I'm working for a commercial shooter right now and its almost agonizing slow watching him go through pictures picking out his edits, 2nd edits and 3rd edits out of a few hundred. I can probably sort, organize and do my 1st edit picks of about 1000 pics in 5 mins. Which actually lends onto another career path of being the digital tech for commercial shoots since that's what they only do; download, organize, file, archive, backup and give technical comments about the exposure. Easy as hell and they make 500-800 a day.

I'm actually thinking of building a backpack rig where I have a swinging table arm, similar to those stabilization arms for video cameras, to mount a small laptop and some spare external battery packs with a few external HDD slots; maybe a 2nd arm to hold a 24" display. Could easily market myself with commercial shooters as a complete digital mobile tech on the go. I know my boss would love a setup next to him shooting on large jobs for faster turn arounds.

5/13/2010 12:28:54 AM

^Wedding was last Saturday.

5/13/2010 7:03:00 AM

[Edited on May 13, 2010 at 9:10 AM. Reason : .]

5/13/2010 9:09:53 AM

[Edited on May 13, 2010 at 9:12 AM. Reason : .]

5/13/2010 9:11:29 AM

^ damn, i miss the old durham bulls athletic park

is that eno in the last pic? it might just be my monitor, but it looks awfully dark...you might want to lighten it up a bit

[Edited on May 13, 2010 at 9:13 AM. Reason : .]

5/13/2010 9:13:13 AM

Yeah, I had a great time at the throwback game on Monday. That ballpark seems so much smaller than it did when I was 13 though, but we used to have season tickets so it brought back so many memories. I shot this panorama as well, I had to jack the ISO way up since I couldnt take a tripod in though. If only I had received my gorillapod a week earlier...


The last image is from Crabtree Creek at Umstead. I'll see if I can lighten it some when I get home. I darkened the greens since all the trees were washed out and don't think I ever lightened it up afterwards.

[Edited on May 13, 2010 at 9:34 AM. Reason : .]

[Edited on May 13, 2010 at 9:38 AM. Reason : .]

5/13/2010 9:34:02 AM