Dean & Roger say Hello

Hi, my name is Dean. I live in LaPorte, TX. Love animals and am just now trying to get serious with photography. I have a Canon Digital Rebel 350 XT. Love the challenge of trying to take well composed and thought out photos.
This is "Roger" our English Mastiff. His is now 22 months old and 155 pounds. He is quite the crazy guy. These action shots were taken of Roger playing with some friends at the local dog park. Hope you enjoy.

Hello Dean and a slobbery wet hello to Roger. ( Hope I got the two of you straight!) Your last shot was a wonderful introduction. My pups would love to meet at that dog park. Hope you enjoy this group.

Welcome Dean. That last shot is a riot. Whatta crazy guy. Is he gonna get any bigger? Technically, I think you should have increased the saturation in the final image.

Cheers,

Hello Peggysue and Scott, thanks for the welcome.

Peggysue, Yes you got the names right. Roger would love to play with your dogs as well, although Illinois is a stretch. He loves interacting with the other dogs.

Scott, Roger will probably continue to fill out for a while. Hopefully he will put on at least 20-30 pounds. It is not unusual for a male Mastiff to be 225 or so when mature. I think we got the runt. As far as the saturation, I think at that time, maybe 6 months ago, I had only ventured into the tv mode to freeze the action. It's only been the last month or so that the bug bit me and caused me to want to take exceptional photographs rather than just point & shoot. You get into the creative zones and you must know something about photography in order to get a good picture, that's the problem, I don't know much. As of yet, I have not been quite able to make a quality shot. Trying to absorb all this info as fast as I read it or hear it is somewhat daunting, I mean I'm on overload here, but I must prevail. Maybe enrollment into a photo class at the junior college is in store. Really though, seeing the quality that can be achieved is motivating.
Another thing, I take a picture and try adjusting saturation or contrast or anything else, shoot again, and it's hard to see the difference on the display on the camera, can you guys see the difference when you make adjustments? I've just started looking at the histogram and as best I can tell you want the graph to be more or less even from left to right - dark pixels on the right and light on the left(not clumped up on one side or the other). What about its height?

Thanks again to the both of you,
Dean

Hey Dean,

Welcome aboard! I like the way that you put these frames together here. As for the exposures - I think they look pretty good - I don't think that it is saturation that is needed, but a compression of the histogram to bring the shadows and highlights in line with each other. Yes? No?

Very nice first showing. Welcome again!

James

Hello James, and thank you for the welcome and comments.
I've just started trying to actually take photos as opposed to pointing and shooting which is pretty much the way I did these pictures several months ago. The last couple of weeks I've been reading and listening to everything I can get. My brain is in overload. (didn't take much, it's kind of small) Really though, photography at the level you guys on this forum acheive is really hard, impossible for me so far. But I'm listening, looking, reading and practicing so hopefully I'll improve.
Thanks again, Dean