Making the best of a cheap digi

I don't think it matters how many pixels your camera has - it's the finished result that's important and web quality images don't need to be large files. You either have an eye for a good picture (and it can be learned) or you don't.

When looking at the competition entries I don't worry about the quality of the equipment used all I'm interested in is the end product.
When looking through the competition entries the criteria I look for are the composition, originality, aptness to the theme and the subject matter. If it makes a pleasing shot it gets my vote. I have my personal preferences but I do try to be objective.

I'm going to be controversial here and add my twopennyworth to the discussion on image manipulation. In most cases photography is a lie - if we're photographing plants we get the best angle, may move things to enhance the image and the final result may not always depict what the eye originally saw.
The same with photographing a beautiful landscape. It may be spoiled by a blot on the landscape such as pylons or telegraph poles. These can be cloned out on photoshop making the image far more attractive but here again it is a lie and not the true picture.

I don't see anything wrong in this and don't find it misleading. Each image should be judged on the merit of the finished product however it was manipulated or changed.

Having said that I will abide by the rules of the competition.

 

Does the W in Glen W stsnd for waspstirer?
I'm with you on the point of enjoying being outside etc I can't be bothered to "shop" my pics but if others want to then so be it it's their enjoment so lets not take this too seriously and just take photos of the wonderful world out there and above all HAVE FUN.

 

Yes - I have to say tht GlenW's point about preferring to be outside was lost on me.

Cropping a photograph and getting the contrast right takes about 30 seconds and I do it at the same time as I upload photos from my camera to the computer. No point saving fuzzy photos because of some puritanical dogma born of ignorance On the other hand, I can't be bothered to do what one RAW shooting anorak does. He boasts of spending 14 hours in the digital darkroom on a single picture! Life is too short

 

Can't see what on earth he could possibly do in 14 hours. Once learned the process is pretty simple.

Like all artwork, painting included, you can go on working the picture so long that you eventually spoil the image and that defeats the purpose.

 

Here's a tampered photo for you. The tree is a Horse Chestnut in the garden here and birds are from from various pics I took in The Gambia. I used it as our Christmas Card last year. :D

Original



Result of global warming

 

hornbeam wrote

i'm not sure if that was deliberately written as an insult, but that it how it has been taken.

my post clearly states that i do not feel that one persons methodology is better than anothers, in fact quiet the opposite. I was simply giving Windy, and anyone else interested, an alternative to photoshopping.

To suggest this is a puritanical approach, and ignorant, seems a little misplaced.

 

Steady guys.

This place is about fun and enjoyment---- don't start flaming and ruin everything.

E-mail and message board postings are harsh mediums ( why else do we have smileys and other emoticons) and lack the sublety of face to face communication so please be very careful about how you word your posts so that no offence is given or taken.

Sorry if I sound like a moderator but I have watched, elsewhere, a wonderful group that I belonged to disintigrate because of a single carelessly worded e-mail.

 

A very wise and timely comment Platenoides.

E-mail and message board postings are harsh mediums ( why else do we have smileys and other emoticons)
"Read my face/body" isn't a paralinguistic component available in normal text and it is very easy to be misinterpreted or to misinterpret texts.

As a very wise former colleague often commented - "If you can't say something positively, then best say nothing at all".

 

No insult intended, but it was Firemedic who asked if GlenW was a "wasp stirrer". So he must have thought Glen was provocative too.

My only point about "ignorance" was not intended to offend but merely to say that if people didn't know how long it took to correct a photograph, then they might well think that it takes forever and keeps us indoors chained to our computers instead of doing whatever in the great outdoors - as implied by GlenW. Just correcting his misapprehension.

Assorted smileys attached as required :D

 

I'm with you Platanoides lets just get back to having fun I joined this site to get a bit of gardening advice and found the photo comp a nice distraction as I like snapping (probably more than gardening). My remark about "wasp stirer" was a lighthearted aside and in not to be used as an excuse to insult anyone. So stop all the digging and lets all get "outside" and get some real digging done and get some muck on our boots.

 

For what its worth, and Ive said it before, I only crop my photos for the comp and save my 'other' work for the Computer Artwork thread
Also, I agree with Platty - using smileys and emoticons does help

 

Sorry everyone if i have caused ill feeling.

i accept Hornbeams explanation and will add the reason I wasn't offended by firemedic calling me a waspstirrer is because it was actually a corruption of a phrase I had used about myself earlier in the thread.

"i was only trying to give advice and it seems i stirred up a wasps nest!"

Anyway,i'll echo the sentiments of others, lets get back to gardening and the taking of beautiful photo's, however you create them!!!!

 

Agreed and just to clear up my remark about "puritanical dogma". That wasn't aimed at GlenW at all. It was a response to those people who believe that you must do nothing at all to an image afer you snap it. There is all the difference in the world between developing an image effectively and altering it to portray colours or effects that were never there in the first place