A Little Something New

[Gentile]

I'm new to the forum. So just a little about me...
My name is Miyuki and I'm 16 years old, currently a high school student living in Tokyo, Japan. I just started taking pictures so they aren't really all that great, but from what I've seen there are some pretty good photographers here. So I hope you guys will give me some good feedback that I can eat off of and use!
Just so no one feels like they need to repeat themselves, if you want to say something about my work, but have already said it before just please tell me where to look and I can do that. Thanks!

Also in case my pictures ever look like really bad quality...I've got a really lame camera. I'm working on getting a better one sometime in the near future.

Black and White
1) My cat trying to hide from me.
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg119/XgentileX/maubehindthedoor.jpg
2) My little angel sculpture
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg119/XgentileX/angel.jpg
3) Some elementary school students
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg119/XgentileX/girls.jpg

Color
1) A lamp at school
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg119/XgentileX/Lamp.png

[Mr. Mu]

Hi and welcome...

first things first...: as long as you continuously shoot and post you will get better. So all shall be well.

1
very humorous. The angle is a bit too confusing somehow, though.

2
if the sculpture is the topic... it's out of focus. Re-shoot, minding the minimal distance you have to keep to your subject matter (depends on the lense, if you got a compact cam just go away a bit and crop later on)

3
you got creative there with the angle and it even worked. Kudos. Grass as well as the whole pic is a bit overexposed (or cranked the curves too much?)

Lamp in the last one's out of focus, again... dont know why, though. Depending on the camera there's a few things you can try.

Maybe you could tell us a bit about what you are using?

[Gentile]

Thanks for the comments! :)

How is 1's angle confusing? I'm a little confused about that.

3...Thanks! :D

I'm using a Canon PowerShot S30. 3.2 mega pixels (grumble) It's a really old camera. I'm trying to convince my mother to buy me a Canon PowerShot Pro Series S5 IS. (see link below) It's probably the best quality one I can get at that price.

http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PowerShot-Digital-Optical-Stabilized/dp/B000Q3043Y/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1195876984&sr=1-7

[Mr. Mu]

angle confusing? I'm a little confused

LOL,
okay...

look at the verticals in the image... none of them is perpendicular. You tilted the horizon which normally suggests action, dynamic, change.

There's nothing in the image, though, which supports the impression which you chose to give the composition through tilting the horizon!
In #3 you tilted the horizon, too, but here you have a group of kids trying to maintain balance and interacting with each other (in addition: image borders and leg angles forming a kind of radial structure) - so the implied action and dynamic is there.

Form follows content.
The form you chose in #3 works, because there's a connection with the content.

The form you chose for the cat pic does not. In my opinion it's disconnected.

A calm image (perpendicular verticals, cat hideaway at the corner like you did) would work better with it, suggesting a static point-of-view which the viewer needs to explore in order to find the subject... would also make the joke even funnier.

go out and shoot...!

:)

[Gentile]

Ohh I see. Thank you for explaining that. I'll definitely be back with more pictures soon. :)

[purplerose]

I like #3. :) Would probably crop a bit off the bottom though.

[Gentile]

I'm using my cat as the subject of my photography project at school so here are some...
(1)
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg119/XgentileX/ConceptArt/mauonpillow.jpg
(2)
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg119/XgentileX/ConceptArt/maudark.jpg
(3)
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg119/XgentileX/ConceptArt/maucrossedlegs.jpg
(4)
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg119/XgentileX/ConceptArt/maubrighteyes.jpg

[purplerose]

#2 looks nice. :) Would probably crop out some of the blurred foreground though.

[Gentile]

Thank you. ^.^ I just might take your advice on that.

[Gentile]

My youth pastor's daughter...
http://fc02.deviantart.com/fs23/f/2007/343/5/9/Zion_by_xgentilex.jpg

[Gentile]

http://fc02.deviantart.com/fs24/i/2007/345/9/6/Sleeping_Baby_by_xgentilex.jpg

[purplerose]

That last one is really nice. Makes me feel warm and fluffy inside... I want a cat now...

Enough blabbering, nice photo.

[Chris_S]

Yea I like that last one to

[Gentile]

thanks :hugsmile:

[eazym]

nice work, yoshimura-san. This is not a comment on your pictures but just a thought. I think that if you are working with a camera that is on the low end, you can still make fantastic pictures by applying a little more Photoshop post-processing. For example, things like texturing and heavy editing can really work well with even the most simple point and click. Check out Racoon's thread, she does the texture approach very well. Or this guy (http://www.flickr.com/photos/punture/). This type of approach is well suited to an old point and click I think. Might be interesting to play around with that.

[Gentile]

lol yoshimura-san? oh boy.

Thanks for the pointers.I have a program like photoshop and I've just recently how to figure some things out on it so I'm workin on that.

[Gentile]

Not exactly an artistic picture...but this is my new camera my parents got me for Christmas :]

http://a384.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/43/l_8c10efac5b10d7ed0fef4892bcc2b2ef.jpg

[Gentile]

(1) Train Station Platform
http://a504.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/67/l_de938fdae73a41996c1933e4a58bea0f.png

(2) Bear Down
http://a719.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/52/l_fa5e599b6441bb1460e1db151a4bf396.jpg

[eazym]

congrats on the new camera, hope to see some work soon. Now for the pics. I know it's very tempting to do cutouts (the selective color stuff) like the kichijoji pic. But be careful of those, they tend to give off a gimmicky vibe and get old pretty quickly in my opinion.

[Gentile]

http://a716.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/96/l_9a907e9ba855ca33a5ac47cfc12f91bb.jpg

[Gentile]

I love my cat XD

http://a590.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/78/l_4d8810e5cd8a756d1280168bc8261575.jpg

http://a189.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/109/l_2c938aab91239e177b882da8a08df494.jpg

[purb36]

yo dude. nice pics. i like the kichijoji one, and i really like the colors in post 11. don't know much about photos, so i can't give you much advice, just saying what i like and dont. but, keep it up dude. and study for that test...A's don't happen by themselves, ya know. see you round the org...welcome, btw. :^^:

[Gentile]

My shot at self portraits! Criticism please!

http://a937.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/3/l_7f036f85a2b3ef9a5579d6aefcca5a20.jpg

http://a242.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/37/l_afb5421e7959aec2aa7a4e001830aef1.jpg

http://a673.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/67/l_934f03fbdf8880621f40b6bbc3d8d000.jpg

[Gentile]

It snowed today :]
(1)
http://a293.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/15/l_58b9f2a69ae0861beffe2f3e3c2b73d4.jpg
(2)
http://a232.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/74/l_d37c384e7b673006228081af8734c2b7.jpg