I'm just starting out as a photographer and would love any and all input on my photos. Please feel free to critique! I want to get better

http://photoblog.com/mcroisant

After a quick look at your posts, I'd say you're off to a great start, IMHO. Why don't you submit one of your images for critique here? It's rather difficult to critique everything you've done.

Thank you! I'm still trying to figure out PB and appreciate your advice. I will submit some images

Ok, so I wasn't sure how to choose just one photo to post here so this is a URL to one of my sets that I would love some critiques on...http://www.photoblog.com/mcroisant/2012/01/11/new-york-new-york.html

Thank you!

You have some decent photos.

[img]http://pb-i4.s3.amazonaws.com/photos/227982-1326894999-0.jpg/img]

maybe this will work?

The picture looks good, although it is hard to see the detail and give some criticism (IMO) with the watermark repeating all over the picture.

A black dog in white snow must be one of the hardest images to get a correct exposure and white balance for but you (or your camera) have done a pretty good job. Looking at your exef info I see you used ISO 800 which seems unnecessarily sensitive in the bright light (unless it was overcast and you have post processed the image).

Thanks for submitting an image to the critiques forum. Not many people do. I have to agree with kevinmee and say that the watermark is rather distracting. There are three questions that always come to my mind when I look at an image: 1) What message does it convey? 2) How does it convey that message? and 3) Does it succeed?

In your image 1) could be - of course - "dog", but also "liveliness, energy, alertness, contrast, contrast, cold", etc. 2) would be to consider the simple (i.e., non-complex) composition and 3) alas, perhaps not so well.

Possible solutions: we tend to take photographs standing. Sometimes putting ourselves at a dog's height gives us a different perspective. Photographing animals and children is notoriously difficult - they tend to move unpredictably and usually too fast for a compact camera (and some DSLRs) to focus - but the snout full of snow (I think - can't tell at this resolution with the watermark) could merit a close-up. The composition as it stands makes me wish you were a little lower and that there was more space to the right of the tail. Alternatively, crop the image exactly half way along its length. The mouth would be at the intersection of the lines drawn in the rule of thirds. It could work.

As Mark above me might say, photographing a dog in snow is - forgive the pun - a bitch to get right. One of the pleasures of this site is you can learn from others (I do every day). I would suggest taking a look at the photographs by Eric (bumpusdogs). I would consider him our resident dog photography guru (among other strengths). I'm sure he'll be happy to offer answers to any questions you might have.

Hope this helps.

Thank you everyone for your input! That pic was actually the first one that came up when I opened the bookmark for PB so I used it as more of a test to see if the image would come up.

I had the ISO set really high for a previous shoot & forgot to change it : /

I agree about the watermark, but am still figuring out CS5. I googled how to do the watermark and it said to create a pattern, then click fill on a new layer et voila. Any advice on an easy way to just put 1 visible watermark on the image?

Use layers ...write out ur watermark and use the opacity slider to adjust ;)

Thanks for the tip! I'll try it.

I tried cropping to make the image a close up of the face but it's too grainy gotta remember to check my ISO

What about the focus on these?

I like the first picture of the leaf. Not sure of any critiques for it because I think it is very well captured. Nice work

Its a good shot, although I'm not sure I would have cropped this way. I would have likely taken some off of the bottom, and left some negative space on top. Selective focus is subjective in my opinion. For me, the out of focus in the foreground is distracting. I would be inclined to shoot from the opposite direction, or focus on the front of the leaf and increase the f-value.

good job