I was over in Whistler at the end of February and I just got around to “developing” my photos at the weekend.
Mostly just holiday snaps, rather than high art, but here are a couple of the better ones:

More over at http://picasaweb.google.com/dalmutinet/Whistler2009

Any and all (constructive) feedback welcome! 😛

Criticism: Biking forum, and there aren’t any pictures of any bikes 😆

Nice pictures, first one the snow looks over-exposed to me, but I’m no pro/am photographer, and my monitor isnt the best here at work.

Last picture is fantastic, almost looks un-real to me, or a HDR.

What camera are you using? If a DSLR, I’d suggest the use of a polarising filter to stop a bit of the glare on the 1st and 2nd pics.

BTW, I’m ot all that good with photography, so the following posts may go against this!

Milkie: good point, but this is the off-topic bit 🙂

The exposure on snow is pretty tricky to get right. I usually underexpose by a 2/3 of a stop, which retains a bit of detail, but then when I process the RAW file I have to be very careful with curves to stop it getting overblown.

On the 12-bit RAW the histogram says that it isn’t overblown, but when I convert to 8-bit JPG the whites often get squashed together.

Better techniques welcome!

Last picture is fantastic, almost looks un-real to me, or a HDR.

Thanks! That’s my “arty” one. It looks better at higher res.

No HDR malarkey going on, just curves, contrast and a bit of dodge/burn.

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bikemonkey: yeah it’s a DSLR (D80). I think both those pics have a polariser on already, but it is busy dealing with the sky, rather than the snow glare. Hmm… maybe I need two.. 🙂

All those lovely trails ruined by snow.

*sighs*

Yeah, I did look in slightly bemused wonderment at the various North Shore obstacles built in the trees by the lower runs. Nutters!

Bet there are some lovely XC trails around there though.

But I’d maybe avoid the deep forest, especially anywhere with huckleberrys:

Any more?

Really, some crits would be really helpful.

Seems to be a bit of vignetting on a few pictures. Not sure if this is deliberate or not.

Try posting it over at Talk Photography Forums. There’s a sub forum for posting pictures for criticism and things. No doubt they’ll give you some great tips too. I knew nothing 2 weeks ago before buying my camera. Now I know I really know nothing. 🙂

Thanks Milkie.
Yeah the vignetting is deliberate and much of it was burnt in during processing. It’s an attempt to keep the eye in the frame and to add some style. Does it work or look a bit affected ?

(I know there are ‘proper’ photography forums, but I’m not really ready for them yet and there are some good photographers on here)

If you want a bit of critique….here I go……

1st Pic. I’d have had the bloke move over to the right another board length and maybe had him a little closer to the camera. Exposure-wise, unless you fiddle with HDR you aren’t gonna be able to control the highlights in the snow and the shadows in the trees. I think you have struck a happy medium, although I would have perhaps under-exposed by a 1/3 stop or so. Often hard to see at the time though.

2nd Pic. Nice use of the polariser….again I’d have moved the subject (the stack) to the right a bit and lifted the camera so it was nearer the bottom of the frame, bringing more of that blue sky into play. The inch at the bottom of your pic doesn’t really add anything, whereas an inch of more blue at the top would have emphasised the feeling of open-ness. In fact, I’d be tempted to crop some more of the bottom off that shot giving more of a panorama feel.
Or shot portrait with masses of blue sky with the stack in the lower corner.

3rd Pic. Great. Might have been more dramatic with a slower shutter, bit more background motion blur with panning. But great pic.

4th pic don’t know really what to say. Doesn’t really do much for me. Low contrast and foggy….but you can’t do much about the conditions!

5th pic looks fab – almost fantasy world-ish. Chronicles of Narnia (film) or Lord of The Rings-esque.

That’s excellent, thanks stumpy01. 😀

1st: Hmm.. I’ve got it as a RAW file so I can try dropping the exposure a little and seeing what it looks like. It was under-exposed by 2/3 stop at the time then I tweaked the levels/curves up a bit when I processed it.
None of it is actually blown out in the RAW, but when I convert to JPG it loses a lot of the tones in the whites (no idea how to avoid that really – any suggestions?).

Agree with getting him to move, but these are very grabbed pics when people stop for a break and they are only just tolerated as it is 🙂

2nd: Yeah the stone figure (Inukshuk) is a little bit central isn’t it? I found if I completely cropped out the black rocks at the bottom right then it lost any sense of scale. But you’re right, a bit of a trim might be in order.

3rd: Ah. Slight confession: I didn’t actually take that one! In fact that’s me riding the sled. I did select the lens, set up the aperture, focus, polariser etc, and tell the guy where to stand. And I processed the results afterwards. But the good shutter reactions (and therefore, the picture credits) are all his 🙂

4th: Fair enough. I was trying to make misty into “brooding”, to try reflect the slightly nervous feeling I got stood at the top of that run without really being able to see where we were going.

5th: Glad you like it. I don’t usually push processing quite that far (very heavy contrast, deep blacks, hardly any colour) but I like how it worked there.

Thanks again for you comments. It all helps me improve!