Topic: Request for advanced criticism

I've been a proud owner of Canon EOS 400D and Canon EF 70-200 f/4L IS USM for a little over two months now. Planning to buy "Canon EF 17-40mm F4,0 L USM CPS" next month or in December. As some of you may know I'm pretty much at home with Photoshop.

I've taken over 4000 shots and posted the best ones onto my website: www.kaarellumi.com.

Until now I haven't received any real criticism about my photography. So I'm asking for advanced criticism. Can you spot things that I'm doing wrong in general? Composition, colors, things that should have been corrected with PS but I haven't etc.

If you want criticism, why not post on some photography forums.
One good forum, where the people are very civilized and friendly, is the photoforum
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/

I've taken a quick look at your photos and you are certainly doing the basics right.
Your exposures are fine, the photos are sharp, the compositions are sound although sometimes the cropping and/or framing is a little tight. You've done a very good job with your camera angles...getting down to shoot the birds rather than standing up and looking down etc.

From a "colours, tonality" some photos seem to lack "snap" - both tones and colours being subdued...that's not a bad thing though, but you might want to experiment with levels and curves to increase the contrast...and perhaps see if you can get more saturated colours although i would guess you shot many of these pics under overcast conditions.

You will also want to try more exciting subjects - pigeons don't just cut it no matter how good you are!

Not sure how long you have been shooting, but you are obviously talented - all the key ingredients for excellent photography seem to be there...so keep shooting and thanks for sharing.



Nature & Travel Photography
Visit the Sleeping Wolves

Thanks.

I didn't do any serious photography before I bought the EOS 400D. I had owned a Canon Powershot A420 which had some nice manual controls some of which are pretty identical to the eos. I used it for vacation photography and I shot a few flowers for my mother (she used them for painting reference) but that's pretty much it. Maybe up to 7000 shots total with the A420. Could be less I don't really remember because the counter messed up too many times. I bought and read a few books which are in Estonian but in translation the titles would be along the lines of "Nature photography 101". I still pretty much go on my gut feeling though.

The camera and the lens really help too. IS didn't come cheap but it was definitely worth it for me.

Instead of the "Canon EF 17-40mm F4,0 L USM CPS" I decided to go with "Tamron AF 17-50mm F2,8 Di II". It is noisier than usm but the af is pretty fast and it isn't as sharp as my 70-200 but I think it's good enough and I got it for half the price of the canon 17-40. With the money I 'saved' I'll eventually be able to buy bunch of other stuff that I need.