New to photography

[morgane8677]

Hi! I am new to photography. I bought a camera a few months ago and started taking pictures while travelling. This picture here was taken in New Orleans at a swing lesson. I reduced the quality for upload.

Comments and advice would be much appreciated! I want to improve.

Thank you,

Morgane

[Geoff F]

Firstly, Morgane, you may find this thread about photo uploading useful

HELP THREAD: How can I post images here?

And some information about your equipment and actual shooting settings would make comments easier.

With regard to that photo. It basically looks OK but some figures are blurred, which makes me think that your shutter speed was a bit low.

Shooting 'crowds' is quite difficult as some people will always be 'facing the wrong direction' or 'doing the wrong thing'.

In this particular instance, the overall composition produces a rather confused scene. I think you may have achieved a better result by concentrating on smaller groups. Or cropping the scene to produce more compact 'stories'.

But I can't see anything drastically wrong with your general photography technique.

[Mike Buckley]

This is such a nice image, especially considering that you're new to photography. Your conversion to B&W is especially nice.

I prefer images such as this when either all or none of the action is stopped. It's probably just my preference, but it's worth thinking about your own preference if you haven't already done so.

[orlcam88]

One of the things that is hard to break out of is the bad habit of fitting your view finder with everything. It's an issue I still have every once in awhile. Try to concentrate (didn't want to use the word focus for obvious reasons), on one subject. For example in your photo, the couple on the rightmost side of the photo is interesting. Put more emphasis on the couple. or if the couple on the far side is more interesting, the emphasis them. If you want to show there are not dancing by themselves, that's fine but your target should take up most of the frame. Leave the rest as background. As it stands, there's too many distractions. The man on the left, the couple on far side and the couple on the right. There's too many distractions to keep it interesting as they all have virtually equal time on the photo.
I hope I wasn't too harsh, just trying to help.

[rpcrowe]

One of the things that is hard to break out of is the bad habit of fitting your view finder with everything. It's an issue I still have every once in awhile. Try to concentrate (didn't want to use the word focus for obvious reasons), on one subject. For example in your photo, the couple on the rightmost side of the photo is interesting. Put more emphasis on the couple. or if the couple on the far side is more interesting, the emphasis them. If you want to show there are not dancing by themselves, that's fine but your target should take up most of the frame. Leave the rest as background. As it stands, there's too many distractions. The man on the left, the couple on far side and the couple on the right. There's too many distractions to keep it interesting as they all have virtually equal time on the photo.
I hope I wasn't too harsh, just trying to help.

Morgane...

Welcome to CiC!

I think that this shot may illustrate what Orlando is saying...



It shows a group of people dancing but, I have picked out one couple as my point of interest. It looks like they were leaders out front but, if I remember correctly, they were just part of a line of dancers. I picked them out because they were the most interesting to me...

The emphasis is both because of their relative size in comparison to their fellow dancers but because they are in sharp focus which separates them from the background dancers. This is called "selective focus".

Problems with blurred subjects in motion...

Often when shooting with slower lenses (such as most kit lenses) in lower light levels; your shutter speed (even with the lens wide open) is too slow to stop relatively fast action unless the ISO is boosted fairly high.

You can get away with a slower shutter speed (and thusly a smaller aperture and/or a lower ISO) when subjects are moving toward or away from your camera than when they are moving across your frame.

Additionally, when a subject is in motion, there is often a peak of action which can be captured at a slower shutter speed. Consider a basketball player jumping for a ball. There is a point between his going up and coming down when (for a split second) he is virtually motionless. Capturing that point is shooting at the peak of action.

Please keep shooting and keep posting!

[morgane8677]

wow! this is all so helpful. thank you so much for taking the time to comment on this picture. I will keep on posting! talk to you soon.

[orlcam88]

that's a relief! i thought we scared you off.

wow! this is all so helpful. thank you so much for taking the time to comment on this picture. I will keep on posting! talk to you soon.

[rpcrowe]

that's a relief! i thought we scared you off.

Me too!

[pinakibaidya]

Photography is the art of communication.While communicating though your picture try to guide the eyes of viewer towards the point of interest.If there are too many subjects competing for attention the viewers eyes will be tired too soon while wandering over your picture.Previous friends have rightly told you the techniques for grabbing viewers attention.