sample of why i joined

[wdawson]

here is a photo that shows why i joined this forum , i thought it was a nice photo....but any suggestions ?

remember i'm kinda camera challenged

[Ben H]

The immediate stuff that jumps out at me - the dog is framed dead centre. Dead centre is mostly a recipe for boring photos, so try and stick to the rule of thirds while learning composition.

Secondly, the bowl of flowers is growing out of the dogs head, and is distracting. Again, if you'd changed angle a bit, you could have got the dogs face to the left side which would be clear of the flowers. Also, because of the background distractions (flowers, ladder, picture), you might do better having a smaller depth of field to blur out the background a little more.

The fence with the light/shadows makes a good background though...

[tirediron]

Welcome; a nice image, but I'll offer a few suggestions for possible future improvements.

The pose is good; you're almost at eye-level which is appropriate,a nd the 3/4 profile works well. However, your subject is too centred in the image. I'd suggest cropping most of the space image off. This would likely have been better executed in portrait aspect. In addition, your background is much too cluttered (ladder, flower pot, patterened fence, picture), and you've used excess depth of field, rendering it too sharply focused and thus distracting.

Ideally this should have been composed against a plain, unpatterned wall or hedge, (Even the diagonal shadows in this one would prove annoying) and used a much wider aperture to give a soft, unfocused background which does not compete with the subject for the eye's attention.

It also seems as you may have just missed the focus on the dogs eyes, but I can't be sure on this less than perfect monitor I have at work.

Just my $00.02 worth - your mileage may vary.

~John

[wdawson]

thanks

yea the more i have been looking around here it became obvious as to what is wrong with this pic.

pets are so hard to keep still

[Marko]

Hey WD,

Some good advice here already .
I'll just add that the dooger's eyes are nicely lit from the flash and that's good. The eyes should be bright and sharp. But you also might want to try natural light. You'll need to watch the eye so that it looks all lit up, but the eye will look even better than with the pinpoint center of light characteristic of on camera flash.
Hope that helps! - marko

[Travis]

Good shot and welcome....

the only other thing to add IMO is the white balance appears a tad cold... the dogs white fur has a bit of blue tinge to it.... try playing around with the colour temp slider in your photo editor....

[tomorrowstreasures]

I want to snuggle the pooch!

[wdawson]

thanks for the input