cswain56's photos

Thanks for the kind words. I went through your pictures and can see you got a talent for photography. I am not expert enough to leave expert comments though. A few general comments. I see from your profile that you are against 'photoshopping'. I would say you must photoshop the pictures because digital cameras are imperfect. You must compensate the shortcomings of the camera by enhancing the pictures after taking them. This in no way is manipulation. You just dont want to leave how your picture should look to a few engineers in Canon or Nikon. You should crop them, use the photoshop 'curves' option(don't use the contrast/brightness), may be saturae/desaturate a bit and do some sharpening. While sharpening only use the unsharp mask option. In most cases, designers of the camera assume you would do this after taking the picture.

A bright overcast day is best for photography. For flowers dont use direct sunlight or flash. Use your shadow if needed. For macro shots I use the technique of poor man's macro or reverse coupling. While framing or cropping follow the rule of third. I thing your 'heart' picture will look better if you crop it that way. All these terms are google searchable and you can learn more about them.

Portraits look better when the lens is zoomed (perspective, background blurring). I use the center weighed average for metering. Use the exposure compensation if you have it in your camera. Shoot the same scene with lower and higher exposures in addition to normal.

Just a few ideas that came to mind.

Best