Hey guys, I am BRAND NEW to photography and I just purchased a d3100 kit this Saturday. Wanted to see what you guys thought of my unedited pics of Zoey. I know the first one, I should've re-positioned myself to get the barrel out of the picture.

theyre okay for your first couple of photos. but ill go over a couple of things.

photo 1: the scene is bad. not because its your backyard but because of the colors. there are allot of bland greens and rough bushes along with other distracting variables in the background. when you shoot make sure the surrounding scene complements your subject and doesnt distract the viewer from the main focus. if you havent already i suggest taking a quick gander at the rule of thirds on wiki or some other site. it basically states images following the rule of thirds are split up horizontally and vertically into thirds and at the points the lines interecet are "impact points" and is where your eyes general go naturally in an image. forgive my bad mouse painting but here is the general looks: http://i.imgur.com/zncO2.jpg if you align your subject around one of these intersections it makes some photos more pleasing to view. lighting also has a huge part in photography but i suggest playing around with your camera more before worrying about it.

photo2: this photo is a bit better. using a shallow depth of field (focal aka dog is in focus but background is heavily blurred) worked for this photo but you used the wrong rule. in photography there are 10+ general rules for positioning a subject within your frame. i myself am just learning so i dont remember most of them but a simple list is, rule of thirds, headshot, chest up, torso up, full body. some other ones are more of the type of picture you shoot (i cant remember the names) but they are: being at the same level as your target (aka kneeling down to same hight of your dog), standing up and looking down at it, being elivated and looking stright down at it, being below it and looking slightly up (can imagine it as laying down and shooting slightly upwards), and being completely below it and shooting straight up.) different rules and positions apply for different photos. for this photo it looks like rule of thirds was used in a held in landscape mode (camera is horizontal instead of vertically held): http://i.imgur.com/vqiE2.jpg although this does work i think the image would of looked better if you shot it in porterate mode (vertically) and centered the subject and shot a chest up photo like you did. this was just a simple crop to see the difference. http://i.imgur.com/qgkmC.png


overall not bad.

also make sure to know where your dead space is and try to avoid it for some shots. although some shots require dead space to make an impact or statement to the viewer.

edit:: heres a few examples of my girlfriends photos that i helped take. hopefully it will make some of the rules a bit more clear to you

rule of thirds/chest up : http://shizukaxxsama.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/#/d4mhyn5
not quite rule of thirds but it shows the "looking slightly down" i was talking about: http://shizukaxxsama.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/#/d4o1phc
heres "depth of field" being really shallow (as you can see the forground and background is blurred creating a wave of focus): http://shizukaxxsama.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=/#/d4mhxej
rule of thirds/same level as subject: http://i.imgur.com/mgHxQ.jpg

also i am just learning myself so dont take all of this to literally but this is just part of what i know so far. also rules are ment to be broken!!!! just have fun with it as you learn

This post was edited by AbDuCt on Sep 12 2012 07:56am