Nature Photography

I've recently aquired a new Nikon D3000 SLR camera. I've done some playing around with it, and have produced (what I think) are some pretty decent pictures. Bear in mind that I am still learning the camera settings, and only know how to use Picasa (by Google) as an image editing program.

But I am eager to see what you all think.

Dramatic Mossy Tree

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Foggy Bridge

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Grasses

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Railroad and Tree

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Redwoods and Ferns

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Dahlia

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Foggy Beach/Hills

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Japanese Maple

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Foggy Road

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Beach

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This one is probably my favorite, just because of the little fisherman in the bottom left corner. That is why I am making it bigger.


I'm very interested to hear what you all think. Criticism is very much appreciated. I have a lot more pictures, but these were the ones that caught my eye just now.

What can I possibly say besides WOW!
You're truly gifted. I mean, these are just spectacular and so moving. Where were these photos taken?
I think you could be like... a professional or something, haha.
I can't criticize any of this because i can't find anything wrong. I'm not into photography as much so I'll leave the reviews for others. Just wanted to let you know I think you're really good!
Keep up the good work!

~Pink

Phantom of the potter,
You are so awesome!!!!!!
These are so wonderful, beautiful, Amazing, and lots more!
I LOVE every single one of these! But my lest favorite is 'Foggy Bridge', but I also LOVE it!
That just goes to show you how much I love the others!
I will definitely keep both eyes open for more of your work!

Jungle

Hi!

Lava here to give you a quick review.

Loves:
1. Beach.
2. Maple leaf.
3. Dahlia.
4. Foggy Bridge.
5.Grass

Okay/Shows potential:
1.Railroad - great idea. Work on the colours and focusing a a bit more. You could photoshop it to make it look better. A crop would probably help too.
2.Red Wood- The colours could've been captured better to enhance the bark/trunk. And it needs a bit more focus. And maybe crop off the ferns.

Nah:
1.Foggy Road- A lot more could've been done with this scene. It looks like an 'I've been there photo.'
2. Foggy hills- Same as above.
3.Mossy tree - It didn't strike me as, wow, dramatic or anything. Could do with work.

That said, you have great talent. I really love 'the Beach.' Good job and keep clicking.
~Lava

I'm going to critique these one-by-one, as I tend to do wtih photographs! I think some of these are compositionally very nice, and as soon as you start to play with your camera a little more, you will be able to work out a few of the technical mistakes.

1. Two things bug me about this photograph. I like your exposure here, and although the concept is definitely sound, the building (?) in the upper right-hand corner takes away from your subject. The way you have everything framed here, your tree is almost completely overwhelmed by surrounding vegetation, and its poignancy is lacking just a little bit already. Then, the overabundance of sky makes it feel unbalanced, and the change in landscape in that corner just makes it too staticky. You might also have been better served if you waited for better lighting--there is nothing remarkable about the light here, and such a distinction would really make the image pop and eliminate our difficulty in identifying the subject.

2. This is one of your better shots, but perhaps by accident! Your exposure is great and the photo is very well-balanced with the white car in the lower left pairing with the street lamp on the right. My only complaint here is that I've seen the photo before. But you have certainly executed it nicely.

3. Your focus is good here, but the composition could perhaps be better. It isn't glaringly unbalanced or anything, I wouldn't say, just a little...eh. I like it better than a bunch of the others, so don't take that to mean that it isn't a good photo, but it isn't groundbreaking. You've shown with a few of your other photographs that you have a good sense of what draws the eye, and if you had maybe thought about this a little more--experimented with a few different perspectives--it would have turned out more interestingly. However, in all, this is a neat picture.

4. I hate the lighting in this one. It is nicely balanced, and the photograph itself has nothing wrong with it, but it feels overexposed (washed out) and bland. If you had maybe come back just as the sun was rising (maybe 4:30 or so to give yourself time to set up and be ready once your really nice light started to hit), you would have found that you could take a photograph that would be much more stirring. As-is, it just comes off as an afternoon shot of the railway. Railways have personality, and I would definitely suggest that you come back and try this photo a couple of different ways if at all possible!

5. Ah! Shooting in the dreaded low light! Compositionally this doesn't strike me as a strong photo, but I think your biggest problem here is a technical one which you will be able to mitigate once you get to know your camera. You've lost your contrast, here, and you've got to adjust the settings on your camera if you want to make everything pop again. Alternatively, you could play with it in Photoshop.

6. No real complaints about this photo. I'm not a huge fan of flower pictures (can we say cliche?) =) But this isn't bad. I really like that you've gone for an angle here, instead of just shooting straight on, and your focus is great. I definitely like this one.

7. This has potential. I think you could have really improved this shot if you had focused on something specific--the lighting is great, and if I remember correctly your camera has a nice little zoom to narrow you in a little. It comes off, right now, as seeming like a pedestrian landscape, especially with the houses on the hillside. There is nothing breathtaking about the scene itself, so it's up to you as the photographer to give us something we haven't seen before--a bizarre perspective or an interesting crop of a familiar scene.

8. This one is great. You could maybe have focused a little lower, but that's my only concern. Not bad at all. The light and shadows really make this shot, and the way you've framed it is very nice.

9. This one is my favorite, actually. Definitely the composition could be better (you know, a lot of my composition concerns might be pretty easily solved--do you ever shoot from your knees? It's a quick and easy way to alter the perspective and make everything stand out a little better, and you don't get that awful foreshortening), but your idea here is awesome. Love this shot.

10. I don't like this one as much. Again, I think you've taken too broad an approach, and I wouldn't have seen the fisherman without your comments. The rest of the photograph is very distracting, and a little cliched, with an interesting little side note tucked into the corner. It shows a great deal of talent and potential, but I don't know if the execution is quite there.

You are obviously very talented and--now--you have a decent camera to help you develop it. Great job, and keep working! =)

Okay, these are AMAZING! I love every one! Keep up the good work and I look foreword to see more of your
work.

Hi, Phantom! I've been really busy this week, so I haven't had a good moment to sit back and review these, but here I am.

I'll begin by saying that Nature photography is a field that you should tread carefully in. Nature is the one thing that most people everywhere see and relate to easily, so when photographing it, you should take care to provide a new sort of interest to your work so that your viewers are pleasantly surprised or enveloped by a new perspective.

Dramatic Mossy Tree


This is a nice photo, but it's just nice. I love the angle you chose to off-set the tree at; it works excellently for providing interest! However, the sky is kind of bland, and the background is just as interesting as the foreground. The only reason we're focusing on the tree is because it's the tallest thing in this picture. Play around with the focus, dear! Try to make your focal part the most important part to your camera when shooting, and if that doesn't work, blur the background or contrast your focus on photoshop or something. This is a nice photo, but the problem I'm having is that the level of interest, in my opinion is low.



Foggy Bridge


Though the white car to our left is really a distraction, I love this photo. The symmetrical lines of this photo aren't perfectly placed, but the position of it, with the vanishing point straight ahead is really interesting. Two thumbs up!



Grasses


I'm partial on this one; I love the focus, but there's little interest. I think if you could have focused on a "line" of grass heads that might've produced a better effect.

Railroad and Tree


Love the concept here. However, the track isn't a dominant part of the photo at all, and the only way I noticed it was because of the title. For photos like this, I recommend going lower so that you can have the parts that matter in the photo in a position where they draw our eyes to them, you know? (Also, that woodstack(?) is kind of annoying to the right, because it's pulling my eyes that way)





Redwoods and Ferns


I don't like this one, because there's nothing especially attractive about this, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be looking at.

Dahlia


I'm not too big a fan of flower shots because they become generic really fast, but I like this one. It looks happy.

Foggy Beach/Hills


One word: love.

This photo is brilliant. Sure, you could enhance it in photoshop to make the colors in the sky pop a little more, but this is brilliant. I absolutely love the hills and how everything sort of meshes into each other. It almost looks like something out of a fantasy movie. Two thumbs up.



Japanese Maple


Hm, while I love the way the light catches the leaf, I'm not too sure that I like this one, probably because of the cut off leaf-parts at the bottom. I kind of would have liked to see the whole tips, you know?

Foggy Road


This looks mysteriously cool, but I'm not really a fan of the way the photo sort of tilts to the right, and it's really dark. So, not really a favorite, but still a majorly cool shot.

Beach


Interesting. I'm a bit torn on this one, because I feel like we should be focusing on the fisherman in the bottom left. If we are, then this photo should be cropped to a 4 x 6 size, so that that's what we will want to look like. Howeveerrrr! The other side of the beach is also terribly interesting and I want to look at that, but the fisherman is pulling my attention, too, because you mentioned it. I feel like this one could be cut into two photos, because the two things I want to look at are interesting, but not terribly so to survive in such a big photo.


I really enjoyed looking through your photos. I'm sorry it took me forever to review them, but, I'm being honest when I say that your photos are some of the best I've seen on YWS in a while. Keep shooting, and please post more! I'd love to see whatelse you can do.


June

Hi!

First off, I really loved these. They were all really good.

Dramatic Mossy Tree: Uh, I don't see how it's dramatic, but I like it. All the different shades of yellow, green, and brown are very pretty with the lighting here.

Foggy Bridge: I like this picture, but I think I've seen something like this in my science book. It's not very interesting since I've seen things like it before. It's really good though!

Grasses: I really liked this one! It's so cool how you can see the little details of the grass thingies. It's awesome!

Railroad and Tree: This one, to me, has a real old feel to it. This picture reminds me of the days when people moving west and building the railroads and stuff. It's got a neat feel to it. Nicely done!

Redwoods and Ferns: I really liked the lighting and the colors of this one, but there's a little house or something in the background behind the trees that bothers me a bit and distracts me from the picture.

Dahlia: I don't like pink at all, but this picture makes it very pretty. It's an epic picture. I love the bud thing behind the big flower thingy. It's very beautiful.

Foggy Beach/Hills: I love the water here. The deep blue looks very dramatic next to the dull sky and the green of the hills. It's absolutely beautiful!

Japanese Maple: I like the shade and the color on the leaf. Plus, I love the detail of the leaf. It's pretty.

Foggy Road: This is awesome! The fog makes the water and sky sort of mesh together on that one side, and that makes this photo look epic! Plus, I love the random wooden fence thing towards the bottom left corner.

Beach: The water is so pretty! This picture is just amazing! My favorite part of it is the little dude fishing in the corner. He's pretty cool!

Overall, these were awesome! Keep up the good work!

-Emily

Okay- so I'm going to critique the ones that I actually have something to say about, instead of all of them and just blathering on at random points, as I would otherwise. I hope you don't mind too much. c:

Dramatic Mossy Tree:
I think that if you turned up the contrast a bit more in this one, it could add more of an element of interest. Right now, green kind of fades into green, and there's no real point of concentration, which is very important.


Foggy Bridge:
Gahh! That's where I grew up ^_^
Really like this picture.. I think I'd like it better in black & white, and you know I'm a big advocate of that, but seeing that you don't really seem to like it.. maybe not.
Anyways.. nice contrast and point of interest on that one.

Grasses:
Is that budding lavender?
I really like this piece.. I can only imagine how you had to sprawl yourself out to get that close to it.. I am in that situation quite a bit myself, and am usually stopping randomly in a field of grass, surrounded my friends, only to suddenly lay down, arms and legs splayed out. When they ask what I'm doing I always say something along the lines, "One second.. I'm trying to get a photo of this blade of grass!"
Fortunately, most of them are fans of photography (and much better than me), so they understand. c:


Redwoods and Ferns:
I think that you could have used the lighting better here.. it seems a little out of focus, and the lighting is quite plain. Perhaps more play with the exposition?

Dahlia:
GAAH! I love this one!!
Photography is an art form; art forms are made to make people FEEL. That is the purpose of art. The evoking of emotion.
And this does that splendidly.
I love the colors, the close up, even the blurred background.
Wonderful. Second favorite.


Foggy Road:
Another good piece. I would consider some play with the exposition.. keep the dark tone, but brighten up the piece in order to make it a little less gloomy.. as it is now, everything is dark.. this makes it difficult for the eye to automatically be drawn to a point of interest.


Beach:
EXCELLENT.
This is my favorite one too. ^_^
This honestly looks professional.. there's an obvious point of interest, the colors are perfect, exposition is balanced very nicely... great job.




I hope that in my rambles, something might actually make sense.
Great job.


-Coral-

Dramatic Mossy Tree: Not too dramatic or interesting. It's not a bad photo, but it doesn't stand out too much either. Also, the color is kind of blah.

Foggy Bridge: I like this one, but the car in the foreground is kind of distracting. Also, I would have liked to see it with the picture taken vertically.

Grasses: This one's pretty nice, but I'm partial to macro shots. However, it would have been better, in my opinion, if you had included either none or all of the grass stalk on the left.

Railroad and tree: This picture is just kind of blah. It isn't too striking, doesn't really have a point, and almost looks a little blurry (though it may just be me).

Redwoods and ferns: I don't really like this photo, as it doesn't grab the eye at all. Also, the house in the background is distracting.

Dahlia: I really like this one, as it's a flower, it's macro, and it's colorful. I also like the fact that the photo isn't centered in the picture.

Foggy Beach: Blah. Nothing more to say.

Maple: Meh.

Beach: This one is pretty cool, I really like the color of the water.

I absolutely love these pictures and I can't really think of any way that you could improve on them. I love the texture and vibrant colors, it just looks fantastic.

I really want your camera!! Can I haz? Pwease.

Keep snappin' pics!
-Once

Thanks for all of the wonderful comments! Unfortunately, I haven't gotten much of a chance to snap more photos recently, but hopefully I'll have more up soon!

I LOVE 'EM ALL!

The Dramatic Mossy tree: Tired of drama, but it's good.
Foggy Bridge: I love this shot!
Grasses: PERFECTO.
Railroad and tree: Hmmm. nice.
Redwoods and ferns: It's a bit... dark or gloomy or whatever.
Dahlia: KAWAII!
Hills: Love it.
Maple: I think it would be better if it's not that close up. And the shadow.
Foggy Road: perfect setting for a horror film.
Beach: I think a couple will fit here more alive than the man with a hat.

100/100. CONGRATULATIONS! keep it up!

-dark