I never really used a camera before.
I took these pics to test out my new Computer and Printer.
I use a crapy digital camera that puts a blur of light at the bottom right of every pic.

Am I any good at taking pics???
1
2
3
4
5
6

Great photos.. #3 is my favorite.

number 5 without the trees and just the shadows would be good. Having the trees entirely out of the picture is more engaging to the viewer because it creates and unseen space outside the field of vision (where there's a shadow we know there must be something making it) and gives my depth to the 2D world you're representing.

4 is nice but I wish the steps were leaning to the right instead, since the lean to the left and the negative space on the right is giving more attention to the left and unbalancing things a bit. Good lighting in it though and good perspective.

3 is interesting but I generally edit out things like phone poles and phone lines. I like the lean of that tuff of grass near the front, it has character.

I think you should keep taking photos.

editing photos == really bad. don't listen to redpanda.

I'd say 3 is the only decent one of the lot. 4 is ok but the composition is a bit boring.

Is This better???
4-2
5-2

Yes, I agree with redpanda. The only way to get better is to practice..take lots of pictures. The more photos you take the more you will like they way they turn out. You have great potential with what I see in these photos. I noticed you took them all horizontal, except for #3 which is oddly sized, I would suggest that #2, 3, and maybe 4 have been taken vertical.

Here is a break down of suggestions for each photo:

Photo 1: This photo is nicely framed, I don't personally care for the subject, but everyone is different. Over all good shot.

Photo 2: Widen the frame to include the entire antenna. There is a sun light spot/non-shadowed area in the bottom right corner that is distracting to the rest of the photo. There is also something dark in the top left corner..not sure what it is. Be sure that you completely view the entire area in your viewfinder before you take the picture. I don’t find the air-conditioned box very attractive in this photo. But like I said everyone is different. I notice you did something a lot of people do, you have the main focus of this picture right smack center in the middle of this photo. Imagine that this grid is in your viewfinder, you want the main subject of the picture to be in one of those spots where the lines intersect, rather than in the center of the photo.
___|__|___
___|__|___
| | <those are supposed to match up with the other vertical lines..sorry can't get it to work right

Photo 3: This photo is also good. You have something up close to look at and then our eyes move to background to look at the large tree. Here you have the tree and the foreground grasses in one of those intersecting line areas (using the grid) however, the horizon line is in the center of the photo. It is normally nicer looking to have the horizon line in the top/bottom one-third of the photo, anywhere but not in the middle. It would have been nice if we could have seen all of the tree, that would make the picture seem more complete. This photo is more of a nature/scenic photo, the power lines in the background slightly distract from that natural feel this photo gives.

Photo 4: This is a good photo, I like the subject in this one a lot. I think it would have looked nicer if it was taken vertically, we could see all of the boards, and zoomed out so we could see a little more of those tree branches. I feel like this photo make me lean to the left with all that extra space on the right. NO your second version is not better all you did was reverse the image. You need to go back out to that tree and retake the picture.

Photo 5: I like how you noticed the tree shadows were there however, in this shot the grass is too varied in color and the shadows are not defined enough to really enjoy this photograph. This photo has too many things going on in it. It’s like wearing a striped shirt with poka-doted pants. Same comment for your second version of photo #5.

Photo 6: Ouch this photo hurt my eyes. I couldn’t figure out what it was and then when I did I got a stiff neck from trying to look at it from the angle you took the photo at. I can see the X you made with the wood framing and the wiring, but there is too much going on in the background of this photo. It’s just not…I don’t have any words to describe it, so…it’s just not.

Thank you for sharing you photos, and I hope you don’t mind me sharing my opinion of what you could do better. Don’t be afraid to get dirty when taking photos, move all around your subject, look for the best angle, avoid taking pictures in the middle part of the day when the sun is the brightest and washes out colors, dusk and dawn and overcast days are the best. Always have your camera ready with you, you never know when you might see something you want to take a picture of.

Not editing photos is only for photo-purists. In graphic design it's what we do, with everything, always. If you do it right no one can tell either as long as you pay attention to the details (if you flip a car to face the other way then the driver's side won't be on the side Americans use anymore, etc.). In a new digital world with the nature of paint, the nature of photographs, and the nature of art itself being called into question there's nothing, in my opinion as well as many thousands of others, wrong with using the tools available to you.

-also, considering they're taken with a digital camera, they've already been digitized and taken out of the realm of traditional analog film-based cameras. The same way a traditional photographer has many things they can do to the film during developement (depending on the timing in the chemical baths at least a couple thousand versions of one photo can be produced, all slightly different) a new, digital photographer can look at their files as film waiting to be developed.

-furthermore, if the concern for not editing is that the act of editing makes it unnatural, you have to consider that the act of first taking the photo is completely unnatural in itself. You're taking a slice of light from the world, croping out what you don't want/can't fit, removing it from that place, representing it (re-presenting) in another time and place, and on a completely flat surface that's only pretending to be the thing that's in the image. Think of the painting The Treachery of Images, with the pipe that had writen on the bottem "this is not a pipe." It's not a pipe, you can't pick it up, you can't smoke it, it's only a collection of arranged chemical pigments applied with animal hair glued to a stick onto woven plant fibers. An image isn't the thing it's displaying. With that in mind I don't think it's such a bad thing to say that the photo doesn't have to be in some sort of pure state because it was already taken from even being able to be that at the moment the shutter button was pressed.

I'm inbetween classes right now so I have lots of time on my hands... >_>

Ok, weird, whay would you take pictures of that??????? cool.

And I don't have a camera, and I never had a camera.
This was taken with my sister in law's camera.
And these are pics of stuff around my house that I took Sunday.
Before this I never even really used a camera.

I just wanted to see If I was good enough to have my own camera.

I'm with Marcello on editing photos.
I,m not saying editing them is wrong It's just I don't want to look at a pic I changed around and think It's real.

I don't believe it matters if you're good at taking photographs or not, just as long as you enjoy it. If you like taking photos (enough so that you would consider investing good money into it), get a camera.

I just got a new T2 *swoon*...

my point in the last paragraph was that even if you didn't change it around it still isn't real and never will be, because it's a photo. If you just don't like edited things though that's fine, just realize there isn't an image (photo or drawing or whatever) that exists that isn't edited in some way. The act of cropping is an act of editing, for example. *goes to yet another class*

One could argue that Nothing is real.
I'm going by my definition of reality when I say real.

No comment, none of the pictures are working for me now. Did you take them down?

I can still see them.
Did you try all of them?

Yeah, I tried all of the links, all of them say either the page can't be found or that the system couldn't find the file. One and the same I suppose.

Yeah same here. I can't see any of them.

Weird....I can view them anyway....

I still strongly disagree on literally editing out parts of a photograph. It's just wrong, you're portraying an artificial scene as real. I'm not arguing with when it is obvious that something is edited (for example a photo britney spears diving out of george bush's mouth), because that is a collage and form of art in its own right.

When you are taking out powerlines or a telephone pole, you're denying the true image. I personally find it rather interesting to see photographs in their absolute state, and in my album, all except one photo (to the best of my knowledge) is in its original format with no editing (not even color balance, and except for some of the really old photographs, no cropping).

Why? Because I think it's cool to say, yea, I took that picture, those are the actual colors, that is the actual composition, lighting, etc..

Obviously when I do graphic design I will manipulate photos until I like it, but in general I would rather find a better photograph than edit an existing one too much.

But those aren't the actual colors or lighting. Like I said the process of developing film can be done slightly different depending on taste and give you very different outcomes. Only one, if any, of the outcomes (I was once told 4000-5000 possibilities) can actually be what the colors really looked like when you were there and chances are whatever you have in your hand isn't going to be that one. Also, although yes an edited photo is protrayed as real even though it's not, like I said literally nothing is unedited because it's being shown in a place and time different from where it was originally, an no image is real. I'm not talking about philosphical ideas of reality, derrickewing, I'm saying as a matter of fact that a photo is not the thing that it represents. That's something we learn about in a visual langauge class.

-actually those figures were for black and white photography if I remember right, from a presentation about ansel adams.

Hey is that Theo in the letsgoshooting one? ^__^!

I like the pic of the big cup in front of the computer.
You take great pics.

They wont open for me....??

I agree with both Mr. Marcello and Mr. RedPanda. I think that in most cases the true photograph is more beautiful than any edited form. However, in some other cases, especially in advertising, fashion magazines, even food products commercials there is alot of "editing" in either electronic or any other form. For instance, fashion models put make-up or apply oil on their body. The food in commercials are usually plastic or clay models. The delicious melted chocolate or chocolate syrup is usually paint. Sometimes when a photographer takes a picture, s/he might notice a shadow on a place where s/he thinks is not so nice. S/he could avoid it by configuring the lighting, but s/he might not want to shoot the picture again, either because s/he thinks it is especially beautiful or just to save time. So, they just edit the shadow. In most cases noone will ever notice. Photographs are not always used as historical documents, they are also a form of artwork. >:)
|XOD|

Damnit. My computer blows. It won't let me view your photos so I can give constructive criticism. I despise the "The page cannot be displayed" message more than hangovers.

Lol Alex. I didn't know that XOD. That does explain a lot.... I would show you mine but for some reason my scaner won't work.... it just stopped scaning.... is it broken?

I cannot view them either... <:(
|XOD|

"Maybe there is something wrong with your computer," says Ms.Points-out-the-odveus-a-lot. ^_^'

Yeah, I'm pretty damn sure that there most certainly IS something very, VERY, horribly, wicked frustratingly, wrong with my computer. It's bloody dreadful. It's not even two years old, and it barely functions without crashing every fifteen minutes as it is.

It does sound like something is very wrong. Maybe you should get it checked out. ^_^

You make it sound as though my computer has AIDS and that I should take it to a doctor.

Your computer should have a pelvic examination. <:)
|XOD|

The pics should work now.

Now I can see! I like that tree ladder one very much!

yeah, the tree ladder seems to catch my eye. I like the comp and the colors in the tree are pretty neat.

I like the one with the rafters and ropes, too!

rafters and ropes?????
Which one is that???

Ohhh...it wasnt rafters and ropes..its the off angle picture of the romex cable going through the studs. I saw it on a crappy monitor...and it looked like rafters and ropes.. now I'm home and i see it. I like the tree ladder lol

I like #6 its mystical.