About my photography
Following the questions on the feedback page I have posted a response to the questions posed.
Thanks to yaodong li for the comments, much appreciated.Comments
Wow,wow,wow!!! Very nice pictures. I am just a beginner, and have a Canon 5D, canon 24-70 IS and canon 70-300. I tried to get some colorful pictures, but failed. I quit like your style, could you please give me some advice? skill? filters? or what camera do you use? Thx.
Response
I think the first thing that you need to do is decide what kind of pictures you like taking and develop your style from there. Try and pick one area first and practice that as much as possible.
You don't say what kind of pictures you are trying to take to get colourful images. If it's landscape the first thing is to get the time of day right, for me I like to go for sun rise and aim to get in position well before then. To help get the colours right I user ND Grad filters from Lee with a .3, .6 and .9. This helps to balance the sky and the foreground to ensure that neither are over exposed. I also have a circular polarising filter which I use to cut out reflections and deepen some of the colours, blue skies for example.
Use a tripod, remote shutter cable and manual focus, set the aperture to a high value 16 or higher and use a wide angle lens. Also set the camera into mirror lockup mode to remove any opportunity for vibrations. I tend to focus on the hyper-focal distance for which I have an application on my iPhone called photo calc.
In terms of kit I have a Canon EOS 5DMKII now but until recently was using the Canon EOS 40D which is a great camera. I have 17-40 f4 L EF Lens, 24-105 f4 L EF Lens, 70-200 L f4 EF Lens, Sigma 20 f1.8 Lens and Sigma 105 2.8 Macro Lens. I also have the 430 EX flash gun (a recent purchase).
I also use Adobe Lightroom 2 for post processing with Photoshop CS3 for any additional work. Lightroom is sufficient for most PP work and the vast majority of pictures never see photoshop.
Another key is not to be worried about taking lots of pictures as long as you can work out what has worked and what has not. I find that the majority of pictures need some form of post processing to get the best from them.
Hopefully that helps, if you have any other queries let me know.
Regards
Simon