Winter is coming

Posted by Margie (Auckland, New Zealand) on 2 May 2008 in Plants & Nature and Portfolio.

I'm a beginner at this photography thing. Any hints, tips, constructive criticism or comments are welcome and appreciated.

Listed on Photoblogs.org

Comments (11)

Michael Skorulski from Cigel, Slovakia

Really nice composition. Love the detail as well!

2 May 2008 12:50am

@Michael Skorulski: Thank you!

Observing from Chester, United Kingdom

Very natural image, it seems funny watching the changing seasons around the world. Good one Margie.

2 May 2008 1:01am

@Observing: Thanks Mike. It's getting quite cold here - though not as cold as the North of England gets!
:)

Anthony from Bielefeld, Germany

Good depth of field and as "Observing" has already said,nice opposite seasons!!

2 May 2008 4:18am

@Anthony: Thanks for visiting, Anthony.

Cheryl from Boerne, United States

nice job, good composition, nice lighting!!

2 May 2008 6:40am

@Cheryl: Thanks Cheryl

Henry from Boston, United States

Your eye always seems to be good and this photo shows that your technical skills are improving. Great eye for color here Margo. As for me, I am on a ferry headed for Martha's Vineyard. It is an overcast day with intermittent rain. Stay tuned for new work. Possibly as early as tomorrow.

2 May 2008 8:27am

@Henry: Have a good weekend, Henry. I look forward to seeing new stuff.

GreG from PARIS, France

Yes I think it's a very good composition and the colors are natural. If you are interesred by this kind of floral close up, I recommand you to visit the photoblog of Diane Varner : Daily walks. She's a friend photoblogger of mine and you will see what you can do with great post-processing.
dianevarner.com

2 May 2008 9:35am

@GreG: Thanks Greg, I will check out your friends site.

Ian Bramham from Manchester, United Kingdom

You know how to compose a photo Margie but it looks a little blurrier than i would have expected from a DSLR.

You've used a shutter speed of 1/500th second but a very high iso of 1250 and a low f stop of f5.6.

I'm not sure if you were shooting in auto or shutter priority but a better bet would be to use aperture priority and an f stop of between f8 and f11 which is the zone where most DSLR lenses perform at their sharpest.

The rule of thumb for shutter speed is that it should be at least the same as the focal length of your lens (in film camera equivalents)....so say you use your kit lens at a focal length of 52mm (the equivalent of 78mm on a SLR film camera) you should have a shutter speed of about 1/80th second.

That's a lot slower than the 1/500th you used for this shot so it would let you bring your iso to a sharper value of 100 or 200 and also stop your lens down to it's sweetspot around f8.

Give it a try next time you get a chance and see what you think.

On a final note about sharpness the server at Aminus3 automatically resizes anything wider than 800pixels which can also make photos that are uploaded larger than that appear very soft looking. I resize all my landscape format ones to 800 exactly before uploading.

2 May 2008 4:12pm

@Ian Bramham: Phew...lots to absorb! Thank you very much for this comment, Ian. Obviously I am still very much a learner (had my camera for 2 weeks...) and I really appreciate you taking the time to give me all this information. Cheers.