Thank you for even caring enough to read it, J I definitely appreciate the feedback. I'm gonna switch some stuff up and leave some stuff, and see where it goes. And I'm also going to put that book on my amazon.com wishlist for when I have some cash.
1) Yeah, I guess I should have centered that up. I could have easily when I was cropping (the original was pretty wide because of where I had to shoot from) but for some reason I decided it looked better slightly off-center.
2) I was standing in a shallow area underneath an overhang here. I unfortunately would not have been able to move forward much because it goes from shallow with a bunch of small stones to much deeper with very uneven terrain. Plus, I don't know if you can tell from there, but it was actually raining fairly hard, which is why I had to retreat to the overhang in the first place. Had to ferry my camera and tripod across the pool, which was slightly nerve-wracking. Not sure if moving up would have taken those vines out of the frame though, at least without changing up the frame entirely.
3) Yeah, the next thing I should learn to do is luminance masking. Definitely suffered from having to balance blown-out skies while being able to bring out the tones of the rest of the frame with a lot of the photos I took. I'll definitely check out that link and try it out the next time I'm editing photos.
4) I knew you were going to hate this, haha. Yeah, the focus sucks and the background sucks and all of that stuff, but I tried to turn it into something at least tolerable to look at for most people. I was using my 18-135mm the whole time, and it just doesn't have the capacity for macro shooting like that unfortunately. When I feel I can justify picking up another good lens, it'll probably be a prime for macros.
5) Agreed on the framing. Kept and featured it mostly because of the tones and because the view was just really nice. But yeah, left 1/3 of the frame is ass. I believe I took photos from a bit higher, but the lighting wasn't nearly as good/the view was obstructed slightly. I was hoping to get to the very top, but I was there in flip-flops, and near the top it got very steep (would have had to physically climb up), so that wasn't happening.
As always, your critiques and advice are very much appreciated, and I'm glad you think I'm improving at least. I'm really loving the new camera, so that's offering that much more incentive to shoot...provided I have the time.
I definitely appreciate the feedback. I'm gonna switch some stuff up and leave some stuff, and see where it goes. And I'm also going to put that book on my amazon.com wishlist for when I have some cash.
