Ah, here.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-SLR-Cameras-Photography-Dummies/dp/1118144899

I borrowed this off a mate when I got mine. It’s a bit rambly (because it’s a generic guide to all DSLRs) but it’s a pretty good primer to work out what everything does (and moreover, why you’d want it to do it).

thanks chaps…

best end hijack now (sorry OP, i like your pics by the way but can offer no technical critique – other than agree with one of the first posts that they appear to be at a slight angle).

Brave man putting your photos on here for critique. Thats all

Some realy really useul words so far, thanks again. I’ve bought a comprehensive yet basic book to keep me reading and I won’t be using watermarks until I can create a more subtle one. I’ll take the critques on board and hopeully have a new set ready over the next days for stage two. Keep the comments coming please!

Hello Ross. After looking at your Flickr images for a while, I would recommend that you spend more time with your camera – specifically, looking through the viewfinder. Framing and focus are the foundation of every image, being vital in the process of representing a scene or subject to the viewer. Think very clearly about what you want in focus and where about in the frame/composition that subject needs to be in order to best present it to the viewer. If you have several focal points, you need to balance their positions in the composition so that the eye can easily move around them and none of them detract from the others.

Using your viewfinder to consider a scene assists you by placing a frame around it and demanding that you fit everything into it. This, and refraining from a zoom lens in order to make you manually zoom (walk around), will really help in improving your composition skills. After a while, you will start to ‘see’ a scene when you’re not looking through the viewfinder.

As others have said, you need to pay attention to vertical lines because most of your images are on the piss a little. Use the grid overlay on Lightroom to help train your eye. Your camera may also have a grid setting for the viewfinder.

Your developing is rather nice; quite sympathetic. Many new photographers go too far with digital developing just because they can. Perhaps play around with pulling the highlights back a bit in order to bring some more definition to the sky/clouds.

Using the manual setting on your camera will teach you quickly how to get the correct exposure. Being able to instantly review and image is the real boon of digital photography, allowing you to experiment with different settings.

Slight hijack, but any recommendations for books for digital compacts rather than SLRs? I have a Lumix TZ40 which has a lot of manual settings that I rarely use because I’m little more than a opportunistic snapshotter. Having had some (accidentally) good photos out of it I’d like to know more about how to do it deliberately.

Something else that can help ‘lift’ a photo is having a really good sky in it, ie interesting clouds. I’m a bit of a cloud nut, I’m looking at skies all the time, and even a fairly mundain landscape or subject can be really improved just because the clouds are interesting. I’ve got a photo of the Cutty Sark, which I think is still in the long-running photo thread, and while the ship is interesting in itself, there was a stream of Cirrus blowing across which made her look like she was moving fast. Within a couple of minutes, the cloud had gone. One of my favourite recent photos, and it got a lot of comments on the Cloud Appreciation Society Fb page.
A polariser is a really useful filter to have on the camera, because it can darken blue skies, and enhance the clouds.
You can have a look at mine, such as there are, on my Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/countzero1/

Nice book ampthill I do something similar – make a yearbook and use it as a Xmas gift for parents etc. As you say, it gives a good motivation! No pics, no book.

Example book 🙂 http://blur.by/1cX6iJg

DrJ

I’ll look at some of the other books later

But I loved this one

http://www.blurb.co.uk/books/2195366-the-elevator-is-out-of-order-please-use-the-stairs

I wish I’d done my treking in the DSLR days…

As others have said…..look at other photographers work. Also read up on the rule of thirds as a starting point for composition. Lighting is a big deal…many landscapes are shot around sunrise or sunset..when the sun is higher the lighting can often be harsher and more tricky to deal with.

http://digital-photography-school.com/rule-of-thirds

whippersnapper – Member
…you know what all the buttons and knobs on the camera are for
Sorry for slight hijack – can anyone recommend a good internet guide to learn such things.

Check out the Fro! (AKA Jared Polin)
He has a Youtube channel and is quite good in my opinion at explaining things in an easy to understand way. He is also sometimes quite amusing…

Fro Knows Photo Youtube Channel