I have been using a 70 - 300 telephoto for portraits for about ten years and have had reasonably good results. Attached are 2 examples I took 2 weeks ago. I think the second one would be improved if I PhotoShopped that little but of pink in the lower right and changed it with the clone tool to the same green next to it.

I like the second of the three better because it shows more of the giraffe's head and gives a clear idea of what it is doing. Last time I went to the zoo I was all set and eager to photograph the giraffes and as soon as I arrived the keepers began hustling them indoors where no one could see or photograph them.

This may seem a little strange, but I really like this photo. No PhotoShop touch-ups either

For the basics, Adobes Classroom in a book for PhotoShop is good.

For selection, I used the system in the filters section of PhotoShop CS3, which I still have on one of my computers. I find the selection method in CS5 impossible. I have not been able to make it work.

I know some people here dislike PhotoShop and feel that using it is cheating. We're all entitled to our opinions.

If this photo, "The Temple of Ramses III," actually gets posted (I have had trouble managing this), then you might be interested in looking at it and knowing a little more about how it came about.

I photographed the man on the steps of a parking garage in downtown Oakland. The statues of Ramses in the background come from a single shot of a six-inch model I did in my backyard. I made three copies, extracted them from the background, put them side by side, and changed the lighting on each one to give the illusion that the light was strongest in the center of the picture. The shaft of light shining down on the man, presumably from some hole in the temple ceiling, was produced in Photo Shop.

Any tool that unleashes one's creativity is fine with me, though I know that there are many "old school" photographers out there who disagree with this. I don't have the skill in pure photography that most of them have, so I have to use whatever means I have available. Besides, there are no Egyptian temples in Oakland, CA.

People embrace whatever techniques they feel comfortable with. I know a gentleman who produces absolutely gorgeous studio portraits using silver nitrate (I think I have that right, but I could be wrong). He strongly dislikes PhotoShop. When I was in art school there were people who loved conte crayon and disliked charcoal for drawing, people who liked acrylic paints instead of oils.

Since I don't have much skill as a photographer -- I depend a lot on relatively point and shoot digital cameras -- I often have to do whatever it is I do outside of really advanced camera techniques. I will explain this a little more when I post something about how I did my avatar.

More power to everyone who produces images, regardless of how they do it, as long as the end result is great !

Really nice photo !

I think this photo of the group of dogs in wonderful.

There is a starkness to the solid blue background that makes one center on the hawk, and I think that's great. I wonder what the photo would look like if the sky had some faint clouds breaking up the background. Mind you, I am not saying you should extract the hawk and its perch and put them against such a background. I am just wondering what the effect would be.

I agree with the idea of shifting the flowers to the right. Don't be afraid of empty spaces in the composition because sometimes they can create an interesting tension in the composition.

I want the out-of-focus flowers to be in focus -- and I cannot tell you how many hundreds of flower photos I have taken that have the same problem. Sometimes I go into a picture with PhotoShop and eliminate out-of-focus flowers, substituting a black background.

But this is a very beautiful photo.

I have a personal tendency to want to shoot photos that come really close to the subject, and that leave out most of the background. I think the tighter cropping in the photo of the boy helps.

I think the photo of the two giraffes is lovely. The only critique I would have is one you had very little control over -- the background. The lines of the rocks -- which, again, you were stuck with -- detract from the picture a bit.

The portrait of the single giraffe is wonderful. I think that if you have PhotoShop you might go into it and get rid of the wires in the background.

Nice photos and lovely animals.