First Post

[boarderline77]

Hey everyone! My name is Melissa, I'm 28 and I have been interested in photography for a long time...I just have trouble finding the time to do anything about it! I took some photo courses in highschool and had a great time with it, and I just took a college photo course last year, for fun. I have always worked with 35mm, but I want to get into digital as well. I don't have a great camera (Canon PowerShot A80) or a good editing program, but I will work with what I have for now. I haven't taken any "artistic" photos in quite some time but I really want to get back into it and try some stuff out. I found this site awhile ago and just decided to revisit to reinspire myself :-) I am hoping to get more involved here, with both posting pics and critiquing others.

Just for fun, I played around with some photos I took last year when I went on a trip to New Orleans. They're nothing too exciting but I would love to get some comments on them.

[boarderline77]

A couple more (including one of my daughter, Julia, who just turned 9 weeks yesterday).

Any comments are welcome!

[drg]

Melissa,

Welcome to PR.

New Orleans! Before the hurricane or recently?

I'm limiting my comments in this post to second set of photos.

The second picture of these three has some good abstract architectural potential. I might suggest you edit it or crop it so that the diagonal of the photo falls across the center of all the elements and the columnar top isn't slightly offset. This one seems to have potential for b/w. The stark contrast might make it work better that way than just soft colors. If you stay with the color version you might want to enhance the contrast in the sky to 'bring up' the clouds a little more. Would strengthen the balance in the overall photo. Might even really soften as in de-saturate some the colors or change the mix of them.

Interesting take on mausoleums. Perhaps again a little rake and angle to the elements and maybe b/w.

You've selected some good elements with your eye. Now you can work on exploiting them.

Cute kid, they always make good subjects!

Again, welcome and hope you enjoy this site. Lots of resources available. Check out the Galleries.

[boarderline77]

Thanks for the tips! I do agree with the black and white - unfortunately, I don't even have a program that I can use to convert to black and white! Hopefully, I soon will. I think it will help a lot if I can alter my photos more than just cropping, etc.

In the first post, the last 2 are the same photo, just cropped differently, in case anyone couldn't tell. I couldn't decide which one I liked better.

Melissa

P.S. This was before the hurricane - it was Labor Day weekend, 2004.

[readingr]

Melissa,

Try Irfan which is a freebe and gives you some editing capabilities. I used for a while.

http://www.irfanview.com/

Also, there are too many shots to really comment on so try keeping it to one per post.

You have some interesting elements in the photos and as far as the camera is concerned there is nothing wrong with it, I mean its a prefectly good camera.

I prefer the close up of the plant because there are less distractions in it. However the colours need a bit of a boost to make it pop.

The flag is excellent

The balcony - I feel the wide white block should be off centre as it makes the building look centred in the photo. The vertical's not being vertical bothered me initially but they are growing on me.

drg has said the rest.

Roger

[boarderline77]

Thank you very much for the comments. I will definitely keep it to one photo per post in the future. I guess I didn't feel that each one of these deserved (for lack of a better word) its own post since none of them were really taken with "art" in mind.

Off to check out Irfan - thanks again!

[PhotoGirl]

Hi Melissa,
I really like your photos of the flower; up-close, but off center with a dark background, the flower and pedels really stands out.