I might be a bit out of my depth....

Applemuncher

Applemuncher

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Name
Justine
Edit My Images
Yes
I've just joined the forum today and have done a bit of snooping around and I'm just bowled over by the standard of photography on here - some of the photos I've seen are absolutely outstanding. Not sure I'll ever be brave enough to post one of mine on here and I don't know the first thing about Photoshop or Lightroom (or have a copy of either) but I'm really really enjoying looking through your amazing photos. :)
 
We all started at the bottom look ,ask and learn
 
Sounds interesting :exit::exit:
 
One thing Ive learnt in life - there will ALWAYS be someone better than you - regardless of skill set.

Take inspiration from it, and try to understand how the pic was taken.

Learn to understand the exposure triangle.

And above all else -get out and use your camera - practise makes perfect.
 
Will do - I think the problem is that I want to do so much that I end up doing very little. I have lots of water sunsets though, I live on a peninsular so I don't have much choice!
 
We all feel a bit like that. But they reckon you can find 50 things in and around the house to photograph. Been here weeks mind and still haven't posted! I've been a serious amateur for 10 yrs at least. Serious illness dented my confidence but just watching and learning sometimes helps anyway.
 
Practice Justine, just keep taking images and reading up, it all starts to come together
 
Welcome aboard Justine and I'm glad that you're enjoying it here :)

Look around, join in and don't be shy about posting photos - as long as you tell people people where you are with your photography and are prepared to take advice and critique on board you'll be fine.

If it's any consolation, I felt the same when I first joined.
The very first photo I posted on here was really, really embarrassingly bad (although I don't think I knew it at the time) and when I stood back and compared it to everyone else's I felt like running back out the door :lol:
I had no idea what they were talking about with their fancy cameras and fancy terminology.

I stuck with it though, took the advice onboard and started to improve.
Fast forward to today and I'm now a member of the TP staff team and earn part of my income through photography.
We all started somewhere and if you're willing to learn and improve you're in the right place.
 
Thanks guys - I know you're right, I'll keep plodding on - I'll keep trying - I don't have Photoshop and I think that's causing me some angst too - it's quite a big outlay before I know if it's something I'll get along with (I suspect I won't), everything is just so very expensive- at the moment, everything's just as I take it on my camera really.
 
Applemuncher said:
Thanks guys - I know you're right, I'll keep plodding on - I'll keep trying - I don't have Photoshop and I think that's causing me some angst too - it's quite a big outlay before I know if it's something I'll get along with (I suspect I won't), everything is just so very expensive- at the moment, everything's just as I take it on my camera really.
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Lightroom is as good as or even better than PS when you are staring pp ...... and even to a more advanced stage ...... it is less than £100 and you can probably pick up a version that someone has got free with his camera for £50 ...... it is all you need

They are giving the Nik software away free and that's good for Noise reduction

Post your images on here and in two week with the help you get you will be surprised how much you will learn and it may transform your photography
 
Welcome to the site. I know how you feel about seeing others fantastic work, makes me feel like hanging my camera up sometimes but I try to take inspiration from them.
Also don't be afraid to show your work, it is a great way to learn.
 
Justine, I just use 'aviary' that's in my flickr account to crop and tweak images.
I have lr via my daughter but never use it (just me being lazy really).
 
Thanks everyone - I hadn't realised that you could get Lightroom so reasonably. I got some free software with my camera (Canon) but honestly I have no clue what I'm looking at.

I recently had a bit of a go at some night time photography - just lighting things up with my torch, I absolutely loved it - I would love to do some more but...y'know, it's dark! Really dark! I spook easily it seems :LOL: - so far though I have lots of photos of boats and sunsets, a couple of waterfalls and I'm just thinking about going further afield to try and take some (in the light!). I really like taking photos though, I just wish I could learn quicker.
 
If you are a student or work in an education establishment you can get a decent discount on Adobe products

Sounds like you live in a great place for photography, give me a penisula and boats anytime over the flat Cambridgeshire landscape
 
I'm not either I'm afraid but I've taken a look on Ebay and there are a few copies for sale for under 30 pound so it might be worth investing!
 
Applemuncher said:
I'm not either I'm afraid but I've taken a look on Ebay and there are a few copies for sale for under 30 pound so it might be worth investing!
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IMO if buying from there be very sure you know what you are buying is legitimate and registerable with Adobe. Too cheap often is too good to be true!

If I recall Photoshop is transferable, or used to be, but that requires the seller to release the license for transfer. I do not know if Lightroom is the same? Having said that there might be older version 5 copies being sold that were bundled with camera kits.......but they must be unregistered for you to use.
 
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Applemuncher said:
Will do - I think the problem is that I want to do so much that I end up doing very little. I have lots of water sunsets though, I live on a peninsular so I don't have much choice!
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That is just an oportunity to practice sunsets if you want to shoot them then great but if not find what you want to shoot and and practice on that.

Posting shots is the way to learnthrough people explaining what went right and what went wrong and you can advance quickly through it.
 
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Lots of good advice already. Have a look at the free photoeditors too - http://www.techradar.com/news/softw...e-10-top-image-editors-you-should-try-1135489

One other thing to consider is the organiser features of photoeditors. Most, (all?), paid for editors have one and very soon you'll find the need to tag your photos or finding a particular one will be come a nightmare.

Just take lots of photos of anything and try to develop (and IMO it takes time to do) a critical eye. Did a photo turn out the way you wanted? If not, can you work out why? If you can't, do post it here with what you were wanting and someone will help.

There are lots of quotes attributed to famous photographers but there are two I like to keep in mind -

"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst" - Henri Cartier-Bresson

"There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept" - Ansel Adams


Dave
 
Tringa said:
"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst" - Henri Cartier-Bresson

"There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept" - Ansel Adams

Dave
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"Always take the lens cap off" - Me
 
You can get the latest version of Paintshop Pro for significantly less than £100. I find it more intuitive than Photoshop (including PS Elements), however if you subsequently decide you want to move over to the Adobe products it's probably not the best thing to do. Most processing software (the better packages anyway) do the same things but in different ways. They'll be available as a free trial so try them out and see what suits you. Just open an image into it and play about, just don't forget to create a copy first so you can't accidently save the mess you've just made as the original!
 
Photography has been my hobby on and off for more than 60 years. I converted to digital from film in 2006. I've never yet used Photoshop or Lightroom, preferring to use free image editing software and spend the money on lenses etc..
 
Programs like Lightzone and Darktable are pretty powerful for free.

They all do a similar job - take the Raw camera output file and turn it into a viewable image file. You can use them to tweak things like colour saturation and brightness levels and to crop and rotate images.
 
I'm on the Wirral too Justine & you've got loads of inspirational places to hone your skills, New Brighton, Thurstaston, West Kirby, etc as I'm sure you already know :) Just get as much learning & experience from here and you'll look back in the future & wonder why you were worried :)

Give me a shout if there's anything I can help with too - I may even have a very old, original & unregistered copy of Photoshop or elements - can't promise but will have a look today for you :thumbs:
 
I'm totally bowled over by all your helpful advice, thank you so much! I will start to post my photos for advice though, that would help me I think.

I've seen a night time shot that I would really like to have a go at - the one where you take a photograph of the stars then another photograph of something in the foreground that's light painted then you merge the two to get one image - I love the effect.

I need to get the right lens first (and go to somewhere not light polluted) and then starts the beginning of my digital experience I think.

Thank you so much for your advice, it's very much appreciated. :)
 
You don't need any post processing software to take decent pictures and I certainly wouldn't advise it if your not very confident, I think it will just wind you up.
Most computers now come with photo editing software, get to grips and understand what can be done in those programs first before shelling out for Lightroom or Photoshop. These will allow you to crop, edit the contrast, brightness and colour.
Some may tell you these are rubbish and you can only edit pictures with the file extention .jpg but as a starting point it's free and you get to practice enhancing your pictures.
This is exactly what I used to do up until a few weeks ago, I'm now struggling to get to grips with editing RAW images and I get very tempted just to go back to post processing .jpg.

In my experience if you start posting images and asking for criticism you will begin to learn a lot more. Obviously some criticism is to personal taste but a lot more of it can be very helpful, especially if you ask.
 
J40ADF said:
You don't need any post processing software to take decent pictures and I certainly wouldn't advise it if your not very confident, I think it will just wind you up.
Most computers now come with photo editing software, get to grips and understand what can be done in those programs first before shelling out for Lightroom or Photoshop. These will allow you to crop, edit the contrast, brightness and colour.
Some may tell you these are rubbish and you can only edit pictures with the file extention .jpg but as a starting point it's free and you get to practice enhancing your pictures.
This is exactly what I used to do up until a few weeks ago, I'm now struggling to get to grips with editing RAW images and I get very tempted just to go back to post processing .jpg.

In my experience if you start posting images and asking for criticism you will begin to learn a lot more. Obviously some criticism is to personal taste but a lot more of it can be very helpful, especially if you ask.
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Thanks for the advice (takes a bit of the pressure off!), I do have some software that allows editing RAW images, I got it free with my camera. I mainly use it for converting to .jpg for posting online but I'll have to take some time out to get to grips with it I think.
 
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