Getting to the bathroom in time excites me.

I drive 2 1/2 hours to get to my favorite store, Robert's, in Indianapolis.

I have blown so many shots simply because the scene playing out was so interesting.

My keeper rate is around 10%. My truly proud rate is a lot closer to 2%.

Something I am much more comfortable doing now is cropping out parts of people. Where I used to think it was sacrilegious, I now see no problem. I did that in # 2 & 3 above.

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This is a little soft but shows that it is permissible to crop out parts of people bodies.

That flower shot is amazing. Thanks for sharing.

In #1 I would have colored her hat before the shoes.

If you want to add color, make the color noticeable. Give it meaning. A red cherry in a drink has meaning; until it is drowned out with the rest of the photo.

Just my opinion. That and a $1.19 gets you a 24 oz coffee.

Good.

I was reading a comment from earlier today. The post directed the reader to an article on how the Rule of Thirds should just die. Because it is not my thread, I did not post any photos to explain my comments on using rules to add to the photo.

The Rule of Thirds can be very useful in composition. That doesn't make it a requirement for all compositions, but it can be very useful and used to express the photographer's idea of the photo. With softball I shoot wider than crop later.

I am not storing these on the UHH server as I did not ask the girls' permission. Their posting is for illustration. All comments welcome for discussion.

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An example of the Rule of Thirds. This is suggesting a direction and purpose. It adds movement.


A Rule of Halves. The batter staring across the distance to the pitcher gives the shot some emotion and depth. These girls mean business when they step on the field.


The static aspect of this shot leaves the emotion to the runner. She is expressing her quiet joy to the bench after hitting a triple. She is catching her breath while her team on the bench were cheering wildly.

First, you don't give any reason why anyone should read the article. Generally, that involves a synopsis. Just a link with no description means its a waste of time.

Second, locking into anything is never recommended by any teacher or knowledgeable person.

Third, the suggestion that the Rule of Thirds is wrong is, well, just wrong. I use it often and effectively. One example is in my softball pictures. A base runner running the bases on the right third of the shot looking at the 2/3. It give her running a sense of direction, purpose, and effort. It is much more effective than a close up of the runner in 2x3 format.

Fourth, I also use the Rule of Halves. The photo I'm thinking of has a close up of our daughter at bat, just her head, shoulders and hands holding the bat. She is looking out over the blank half toward the pitcher. The extra space accents her "showdown stare". It is much more effective than a square crop of just her.

No rule is a law. But they do give emotion and context when properly used. They can draw attention to the whole. And no rule of composition will work in most, let alone every situation. The key is to knowing why a composition rule works and why it doesn't.

Before changing to RAW, which I highly recommend, I saved my JPGs in an event folder. In that event folder I added a subfolder which held all my processed photos. I never opened and closed a photo in the event folder. I would copy the photo into my editor and saved that into the subfolder. The original JPG remained the same as when it was d/l.

I do recommend you try using RAW.

A suggestion is to use Opera. I used to get problems d/l in FF and to a lesser extent in Chrome. Opera gives no problems and uses fewer resources.

My first reaction would be a too large file size. My second guess would be AV interference.

I like to shoot with some room for cropping. Trying different crops can give you ideas that didn't occur in the field.

It would be better if you saved your source JPGs as JPGs and did not touch them. That way they don't loose their quality.

What I did before turning to RAW full time (which I recommend) is to leave my original, unprocessed JPGs in one event folder. I would create a subfolder in that folder to hold my processed photos. If I wanted to process a shot I would just copy the original JPG to my editor. If later I wanted to do another edit, I would just copy the original again and when finished, save it in the subfolder with an appended file name. Because I did not save the edited as the original I was never degrading the original.

But seriously, editing a RAW photo gives so much more room for adjusting.

Nice shot.

My unsolicited suggestion would be to crop 1/2 to 2/3 off the bottom. The bokeh is nice but you don't want to overwhelm your subject with it.

You have a good eye. Some quality shots, thanks for sharing.