happy new year

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All wars are civil wars becasue all men are brothers

seasons greetings and best wishes for the new year

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"Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket" - George Orwell

Remember Emily from Walverhampton (the Cheecky Monkey), the girl that was with Ben....

well, I have pics of her on my page,...just lighting test shots, but have a look.

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"The only romance I wanna see around here is a pair of hancuffs."

hey hunny i made something for you [link]

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I reject your reality and substitute my own!

Okay, so I had a look through your gallery. I know I didn't leave any comments, but I did take some time to look at several of your photos and rather than restating the same idea on all of them I figured I could just leave ya a not here. Now my disclaimer is that I'm only trying to give constructive criticism and that I think it is what you wanted rather than ass-kissing. Take my words as lightly as you want.

I feel that if you want to improve your photography you need to really concentrate on what you see and how you want to present it. I study photography like a madman on my own and artistically and technically speaking you are still in the first stages of becoming a creative photographer. Now don't let that get you down! We were all there at one point --- I only started photography about two years ago and I could easily show you examples of my early stuff which is, well, horrible crap (just lemme know if u want some links, I don't hurt my ego willingly ).

A lot of your photos (this is speaking separately from your recent photomanips which happen to be very good but I am definitely not one to critique those) seem to be more representational rather than artistic. Now I'm not really sure what you wanted as far as your final photo, but judging by the fact that you added most of your photos to the Art Photography section rather than the snapshots, I am inclined to think that you wanted to make this artistic and I think that I should finally end this run-on sentence.

When composing your photo in your viewfinder, take some time. Now I realize that sometimes you only have a split-second to take a photo, but if you just relax and really take your time before you take an exposure, I think you will like your results better. Look for compositional elements that are striking and effective. A good example of where you already did this is on your Great Wall shot. The use of leading lines is great, a technique which draws the viewers eyes from one part of the scene to another. But I would still suggest looking at other people's photos for ideas and for trends.
For example, 99% of the better portraits that you will see have the model's eyes in sharp focus. This is a very common trend in portrait photography as the eyes are usually the focal point and are always engaging. Now, of course, rules can be broken... but as they say you need to know the rules before you can break them.

I'm getting a little bit off-track.

The first thing that you really need to do to make a successful photography is say to yourself, "What am I trying to show the viewer?" Once you figure out exactly what it is (this can be a deceivingly difficult question) then you move on to actually photographing.

Some things to look for to help make for exciting and just generally better photographs:

Diagonals
Unusual Viewpoints
Contrasting Elements: Red/Green, Black/White, skinny woman/fat man, etc.
Intentional Perspective: ex - tilting your camera up when photographing a building to give the illusion that it is taller than it really is
Placement of Your Focal Point - The main subject of your image is the focal point... trends show that placing it on the Rule of Thirds intersections (if you don't know what that is, look it up ) is a very effective way of composing your photograph
Leading Lines
Vivid Colors
Details <----- VERY Important

I'll leave it at that for now. Sorry if parts of this are incoherent and nonsequential --- I wrote it at 7:30 in the morning . But I hope that this helps and counts as some critiques towards your images. If you feel that I lefted some subjects open-ended just let me know... and if you have any questions that you would like some insight on or if you need anything just drop me a note or comment somewhere and I'd be glad to give you whatever help I can offer.

Sry for this mish-mash of ideas -- don't know exactly what it is you want so it's the best I could do!

Happy shooting,
Lee

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"A poem is never finished, only abandoned." Paul Valery

thanks for the favs!

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Greetings! I command the light cavalry detatchment of Joy Division...

[link] Join the JAMSHED STRIP, draw stuff, submit comics, have a laugh, meet new mortal enemies, and so on and so forth...

thx for the +fav

Thank you for the watch and the fav!! Much appreciated.

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"A poem is never finished, only abandoned." Paul Valery