Are my photos any good, or should I keep my hourly job?

Question:http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlaszacs/pa...

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlaszacs/pa...

Here is a good place to look for more information on landscape and wildlife photography

http://www.leppphoto.com/
http://www.geolepp.com/

You may want to attend one of George's workshops before you take your photography to its next level. This will do three things 1) give you time to buy the camera's and lenses you need for shooting the images you love to shoot, 2) give you time to develop clients while you still have some income and 2) network with other photographers in your field

keep your day job
they're really nice but it's a photo almost anybody could take

looks pretty average to me...

uh what kind of camera are you using? i suggest a SLR.. and there not bad its just ive seen alot better :/

I like them. Keep your job until your sure. But I think they are good.

wow..i love the first one, its soo pretty....and since i used to take pictures for a magazine ill give you a tip (the second picture)..rule of thirds..place subject on pivot point, not directly in the middle...but other than that, theyre great!! (i really like the first one)

Without pictures of naked women you're not going to get my attention or any one else's money. You have a good eye and talent, but the wrong subjects.

i only looked at page one and i thought they were really good im guna put a couple of them on my mp4.

id keep working take some classes save up to buy good gear and know how to use it before making any plans.

there amazing!! they look like there right out of a national geographic magazine..i wouldn't quit your job but i would definitely pursue photography..good luck

gosh ive been reading what ppl are saying, how rude..i think there great..you have a good eye..dont let what some of these ppl say put you down..

i think the waterfalls and old building are my fav...

not really, i dunno how many people capture a nice sunset and instantly feel they have alot of photography talent.

you are unaware of the rule of thirds,
exposure is incorrect,
direct sunlight,
and whats with the black abyss?

the only one that impressed me was number 3 (mountain shot) however- possibly incorrect time of day.

Im not having a go at you, it is a nice portfolio. but everyone can shoot that stuff.

Stand a chance as a professional?
YES! with proper training.

....... WOW! You are really good at taking photos! You should definitely keep your job as a photographer!! I'm a child, so I don't know what to say about 'words of wisdom' but all I know is that you're really good! Keep up the good work!

o.k. theyre good but theyre not the greatest.stick with the job and dop this as a hobby with time youll become better always follow ur dreams

Your pictures are rather ordinary. The tilted horizons show that you aren't paying attention. The opening sunset looks a little out of focus - note the mountains aren't sharp. Some of the scenics have blown highlights.

Enroll in photography classes and learn about composition, light, f-stops and shutter speeds. Learn how to make exposure compensations when you take the picture - don't depend on some computer program to "fix" your mistakes.

Learn to take your time - mountains and streams and forests tend to stay in place. Think about what you are photographing. Look at a scene from different angles - standing, sitting, lying flat on the ground. Move a few feet to the right or left and see how that changes your composition. Learn to look at the whole scene - not just that small part that caught your attention. Look at the background.

Keep practicing and good luck. Keep your day job for now.

Hi Robert, if you're asking the question there are doubts in your mind and I'd listen to them - when they disappear then I'd go for it but not before.

I'm going to re-post but heavily edit a reply I gave to a critique a couple of days ago, which refers to some basic issues. That's the bad news, the good news is that basics are the easiest and quickest to learn / re-learn, so you have a golden opportunity to progress quickly from now on - it's all up to you.

Most pros are going to give you a pretty hard time - mostly on technical stuff you don't know about yet... I'll try to offer you some positive suggestions and explanations.

The first one is exposure. While there are photographers who regularly break the rules, they generally have a very specific reason for doing so. In this case the sky on your first image is overexposed - the brightest areas are forming blocks of white. At the same time your foreground is dark and detail less so the mid-tones (normally the richest / most detailed parts of your image) are compressed - there is relatively little tonality in your image as a result. It may seem strange but this is going to be something a lot of pros who are trained in metering and exposure will look for.

By tilting your camera up and covering more of the sky you'd have had a lot more tones in those clouds. In addition if the sun is in your image it ought normally to be the highlight point, implying that it appears as a round ball with clean edges, which will thus darken the tones in the rest of your image accordingly.

Following on from the above, the next issue is composition - you used one device which is balance, but not exceptionally well, which has split your image into 2, with the foreground being heavy shadow - where is your point of interest? Sky or ground? ...

The other compositional devices are things like 'triangles' and 'diagonals', 'duality', 'portrait' and the 'rule of thirds' - the last one being a principle of counterbalancing visual 'weight' with 'space', at a ratio of 2/3 to 1/3. So positioning a small key point of interest is often more effective if it is done 1/3 into the picture, or even at the intersections of a horizontal third and a vertical third (known as the golden section).

So, in image 1 I would have been tempted to make even more of that silhouetted foreground by making it even blacker, but to leave it as a relatively skinny line at the bottom of your image to 'hold the sky in', whilst moving the viewers interest from there to the richer tones and textures in that sky - which would have improved both your composition and solved most of your exposure difficulties in one go.

Several other images are showing a tendency to underexposure - have you noticed a lack of rich tones and fine details...a 'milky' appearance to the mid tones? This kind of thing is very basic in terms of getting your exposure spot on and knowing how, when and where to 'lean' the mid tones of your image in a certain direction to preserve either highlight or shadow details for example, especially if images are 'back-lit'.

Next, the thing that will make your work stand out is Light and in landscape work this means 'atmosphere' - knowing the optimum time of day and weather conditions to get the best out of your subject. You need to push those boundaries and be out and about when any sane person is indoors keeping warm and dry! This, along with shooting PRE dawn and POST dusk (just!) is going to leave you out there when most snappers have gone home because there is (to them) no light... it's when the light is often best.

I'd also consider investing in to my mind THE two essential types of landscape filters - a Polarizer and some ND (Neutral Density / neutral grey) filters. The latter can help you to create longer exposures, so you can use a tripod and allow water to streak and flow and become like a river of mist. Graduated ND filters can help you to reduce exposures on bright skies for example, to help the sky tones to balance with the land - keeping that mid-tone detail!

Finally you need to consider thinning out your folio - I'd suggest after you get stuck in to some of those tutorials on Image-nut. This is a nasty job because it's like choosing between your children but it has to be done... choose the very best and if the others can't live up to them delete them from your folio. This is how you continually raise the quality bar on your work... if in doubt take some advice. Try to seek out a really good landscape photographer who will give you positive and detailed advice - the negative stuff gets you nowhere as a learning exercise and just erodes your morale.

Ansel Adams had to start somewhere and a good place to think about landscapes is to copy him. He went out in the field with a map and compass, like you he would note good locations... but he would also refer to the sun, stars, angles of light, and use his imagination - what would this look like if it was dawn, or dusk? Where will the sunrise or sunset be coming from... ? What would this look like if there was a stormy sky, or if there was snow on the ground? How would the textures be affected if the light was skimming over the subject instead of coming in from in front or behind? How can I make this place look... amazing!?

This information would give him a list of shots 'to do' which he could go out and get when the conditions were right, or wait for accordingly... sometimes for days or weeks on end.

If you want more of this kind of information try this:
http://www.image-nut.com - it should explain everything simply and step-by-step, just start at the beginning!

BTW There's a famous story that Johannes Brahms (a top classical composer) had the work of Beethoven thrust under his nose - the result was that he didn't compose for years afterwards. Finally he was persuaded to try again and he wrote many fabulous tunes - among the very finest music... how much more could he have produced if he'd kept going and tried to use Beethoven as a positive example and not an impossible benchmark to live up to? The world is poorer because of it - so keep going!!

I hope that is the kind of thing you were looking to find out.

Good luck.

PS I am happy to try to do one in-depth positive critique a day - but I'd like the TC's here to also add their thoughts and to cross post to image-nut.

Keep the day job, at least until you learn some things about photography.

Your pictures are snapshots, some better than others, with many of them suffering from exposure and compositional problems. Most are washed out with blown highlights. You could tweak them some in Photoshop to increase the saturation and adjust the levels. You are also suffering from crooked horizons, which is easy to fix in an image manipulation program. Just pointing your camera at a pretty scene and snapping does not make a great photographic image, although the "gushers" will probably tell you they should be in National Geographic.

http://photo.net/photodb/member-photos?u...

Herre is a link to one of my favorite landscape photographers. Also check out Galen Rowell, just do a Google search.

However, your photos do make me want to visit that ghost town! You can learn the craft of photography on your own, or take a class or two. Get a book on simple beginning photography. Study your camera manual. Visit professional websites or great magazines (like National Geo.) and study the light and composition. Get the book "Understanding Exposure", by Bryan Peterson. Then put into practice the things you learn. Keep shooting and enjoy. Even if you never do photography professionally, your images will improve as your skill grows, and you will have a delightful and fulfilling hobby for life. Best wishes!

This is a site of a friend of mine...http://tiborvari.exposuremanager.com/g/l...

Tibor is an IT guy who would like to be a full time photographer. He runs a few workshops a year, but hasn't been able to leave his day job. Now I would ask anyone who shoots landscapes and wants to go pro, how do you stack up to him? If he can't get full time work, you have to be far better than him. (Reality check!)

They're just average amateur snapshots.

Buy a few landscape photography books and see what sells.

Freeman Patterson (Canadian) is a good shooter and so is Steve Parish (an Aussie).

V