What's the subject? The geese or the tree? Nice lower half of the sky which could be suped up by increasing the contrast.This being a critic thing is well easy. Where's my cheque?
Exposing for snow is always a bit of a pig, especially in overcast conditions; underexpose and it all looks grey, overexpose and lose your highlights. It's a digi camera and the subject isn't going anywhere, so bracket your exposure and see which gives the best results. Also check your white balance isn't set to sunshine.I normally overexpose in snow by about 2/3 to 1 stop, but I seem to have only gone 1/3 over on these ones, and I forgot to put it on RAW too. The third one had tricky lighting as the tops of the posts were in direct sun but the rest of the snow was more gently lit. White balance is normally just on Auto (I usually adjust in RAW anyway)Also none of the pics look totally pinsharp, are you using the smallest aperture you can get away with handholding on?Hmm, that's a tricky one! My lens (Canon 17-55 F2.8 ) is super sharp from F2.8 to about F6 but quite quickly loses sharpness after that, so I have a tendency to stick around the F5.6 mark - I should experiment more with the smaller apertures to max out the DOF, learning, learning...The last pic has no real focal point to it? I would have tried shooting down the fence line.There was something nice about the light on the fence posts, the snow shading and the tress, but it just doesn't quite seem as good as I rememeber - maybe you're right, maybe those things are there, but it just doesn't work because of the lack of focal point.
This will probably come across as sounding a bit odd , but I find the background distracting in pic 2 ......
Composition is a long learning curve. If you're aiming for Kenna's style, the key thing is to simplify. And then simplify further. All those could be simplified a lot further. With the first two, the trees back right are distracting and unbalancing. I'd suggest different to Lagers - back off, and use a longer lens - this will isolate the tree more, and get very low, to place it against the sky. With the third, I'd agree with Lagers - a step or two forward and right, wait for the sun to go in - which simplifies the scene by smoothing the snow and removing the shadow from in front of the trees (or if not, perhaps ensure the central post top is seperated from the shadow behind) - then crop to square, covert to b+w and boost contrast.I think most of Kenna's work is done with a standard prime lens - there's a great film of him at work here. Never underestimate the impact of the kit on how you work. A manual film camera with a standard lens might be a good exercise to get you into the mindset.Realised whilst messing that the shadows of the fence and wires are quite complex, again, an overcast moment might improve this.
What is the whole shizzle with RAW anyway?? Tris used my camera once and changed the settings to RAW and Jpeg saying I should always shoot in RAW and process later - I changed back after it filled up my memory card too fast....
is it really much better
- and do I then have to buy/use some fancy dan bit of software to process all my pictures?
E.G. I noticed in the above that the goose scene has a wonky horizon - which is my #1 ferk up - so now I check horizon every time and have the grid lines thingy up in the viewfinder.
I wondered if her fancy camera helped
Conversely I'd say taking fewer well considered shots generally speaking (i.e. landscapes) will give you better results. Nobody can go out and take 500 quality shots in one go. I think Ansel Adams once said if you can take one photo each month that you're entirely hapy with then you're doing well (edit: I found the actual quote "Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop"). This still holds true even with digital. I certainly get better landscape results by taking fewer photos, and I'm not convincved I learned very much back when I did used to go out and fire off shit like it was going out of fashion - its hard to glean any lesson from a folder with 200 very similar photos, especially since you can't possible remember the your intentions for every single shot.Bearing in mind if you're using bobby digital then you can see straight away the exposure, WB and composition of your shot instantly.Chris is on the money with tripods. Obviously sometimes in very fleeting light its not practical, but more often than not the compositional benefits of tripod use are tremendous, even if you've got a D3x and can shoot at 5-figure ISOs.
