Walking Aroundby
Carpe DiemComment: From the Critique Club:
First off let me say that I am always honored to help out our younger community members. If you ever have any questions, please feel free to PM me at any time!
Now to your photo. First off I would like to say that you have a very nice composition here. You used the rule of thirds (whether you knew it or not) to give a very pleasing effect. This makes me think that you have some nice raw talent. However, looking at your comments, I see that you took this shot on a windy day. Your shot is very soft and this may be why. It looks like either your focus was off or the flower was moving around a bit giving it a little bit of motion blur.
It appears that you got the exposure here nice and proper. You can tell from the detail in the white petals. It is hard to get such detail and not end up blown out or with muddy greys instead of white. Your whites are a TOUCH dark but not too much. You may be able to fix this in post processing using levels.
I see that you shot this at ISO 400 according to your notes. I wonder why that is? Was it an overcast day? Was it in a shadowy area? Whenever possible, and especially with Point and Shoot cameras such as yours, it is important to use ISO 100 or lower if this camera has it. You will have much less noise in your shot. You can see the noise in this shot in the greens of the background leaves. It looks a bit grainy. The side effect of the lower ISO though is slower shutter speeds which make it harder to get nice shots of things that are moving.
My last question for you is this... Does your camera have a tripod mount on the bottom? If so, you should always always always use a tripod unless there is a specific reason not too. In this example, even with the wind moving your subject, by isolating (making it as still as possible) the camera you make it easier to get a nice sharp image. When I had a camera similar to yours, my photography took off by leaps and bounds when I was given a tripod to use. I would always put the camera on the tripod and use the timer to keep the camera nice and still.
One final thing that probably brought your score down is the DNMC nazi's. Does Not Meet the Challenge will make even the nicest shot score much lower than it deserves. In this instance, I do not believe that the voters saw this as a photojournalism type shot...
I hope you find something here useful. I know it's kinda a lot to digest therefore, as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to PM me or ask in the forums. Whatever you do, take your camera everywhere and shoot shoot shoot... I look forward to seeing you improve with practice!
Yours
TC
Message edited by author 2006-05-10 19:52:03. 
Photographer found comment helpful.
