Take a look at my photos

I am a bit new to photos but I take them out side with my own pets as practice. I found that many people love the photos but need some experts to tell me how they look or how I should improve to make them much better.

Welcome aboard.

In the first one, the dog is too dark and I can't really see any detail. Some fill flash or a better light angle would help, as would some exposure compensation.


The second is way cute, but the focus falls on the tip of the nose rather than on the eye which makes the whole thing appear out of focus. If you don't have enough depth of field to get the whole head in focus, then be sure to get the eye. Of course there are exceptions for artistic reasons, but I don't see this as one of them.

Hi Stephanie,

Welcome to the forum! We hope to see a lot more of your work here over time. Jim already mentioned on some details of your shots, and I think he is right on the money. In regards to the first photo, my guess is that it was taken at mid day some time and that the camera metering was having a hard time holding the bright whites of the dog, the slightly less but still bright greenery, and the shadows that were being generated by the sun. As Jim mentioned, putting in some fill flash is a great way to combat this. While it is not an ideal time to be photographing subjects, the reality is that we get asked to do it all of the time and that is the way to do it.

As Jim mentioned in the second shot, there is a definite issue with Point of Focus. Ideally, you want the nose and the eyes and ears to be sharp. It generally means that we are shooting at narrower apertures than we would for other forms of portraiture. With humans (and some dogs/cats) the nose and eyes are virtually close to each other in terms of depth and as a result, we can get away with shooting wide open. Sometimes it is really desired as an artistic effect (such as softening a brides face but having nice sharp eye lashes, for example). In this case though, I agree with Jim - particularly with that adorable hat on the doggie! You want that all to be in focus!!

One last comment on the second shot. Highlight exposures are also happening here. You can see really bright lights on one side and shadows in the middle. Also, some pinkish hue in the middle of the photo. Sometimes you see this when you are setting an auto contrast point (perhaps trying to emphasize the whiteness of the dog) and for some reason the rest of the image just gets that 'sea of pink' in not quite 255 bright tones of white. That is something to be mindful of.

Anyway, awesome effort! As Jim mentioned that second shot is a really cute composition. We just need to work on some of your technique a bit to bring it all together.

Sincerely,
James

PS Welcome again to the forum. It is a gutsy thing putting your first photos into the Critique section. I hope that you feel it was honest and helpful - and done in a nice way.

Thanks for the critique. I really wanted some advice on how the photos was and if they was of any good at all. I am still very new to photography. I do it my self for fun and found alot of people seem to want to buy my photos and place them on their wall. Most of these I take out side. I hate flash so I only take photos using out side light or photos using the natural light.