Could someone give me some pointers?

Please?
I'm very boring as a photographer. I always joke and say I'm anal about angles, but it's really not a laughing matter :?
I always have to crop my pictures. The focus always has to be "in the center" etc.

Here are some shots I took today.
What could I do to make them better?

http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/913/wthspiderbest.th.jpg
I think the body is too light and the background is too dark lol

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/1...daisies.th.jpg
I think the background is too light.

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/4...nbeauty.th.jpg
I tried getting creative, but the photo was just too poor to begin with.

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/5...gonfly2.th.jpg
This is the same bug (dragonfly ??) but you can no longer see the blue in its wings :( and the body is too blurry.

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/6...vermoth.th.jpg
I really like this one... it's been cropped but is otherwise unedited. But I feel it needs something (?) more.

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/7564/bigbee.th.jpg
I REALLY like how the bee came out... I just wish everything was focused better.

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/5...ifulsky.th.jpg
Big, blue, *Boring* sky.

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/3...cingact.th.jpg
hehee.. nothing is good about this shot. I just took it for the memory. The poor barn is on the verge of collapsing, I was wearing sandals in snake territory with hay almost as tall as me growing. I'm just thankful the rats appear to have moved out. Those things were vicious lol

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/1...eflower.th.jpg
I love this flower pic. But it's nothing remarkable lol.

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/8...rrytree.th.jpg
I tried being creative again, but it's still just a dead tree :P

All advice will be greatly appreciated.
I took almost 150 pictures this afternoon and those are pretty much the only ones worth sharing :D (but, in my defense, some were taken as reference shots or to give me a perspective on size
The spider shot was taken after finding 3 mushrooms and a VERY weird lichen (?)- type thing which the spider was hiding under. I took several pics of the shrooms and lichen because I'm trying to educate myself about them.

Anyhow.......

I like the spider one.

I am both confused and offended by your "boring sky" comment.

Thanks Abra. I wonder if he eats rolly pollies because there were dozens of the suckers there with him lol.

Offended, :eh:
Personally, I love pictures of the sky and clouds and sun rises/sets. No one in my family seems to share the appreciation lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zhaylin

The focus always has to be "in the center" etc.

---

Consider it a habit to get rid of, if you're asking for advice. If it's a style you wish you keep, however, that's entirely up to you. The composition of a shot can be enhanced depending on how the background and other elements of the foreground are laid out with respect to the subject. Graphic design revolves around the placement of visual elements so that the resulting image is engaging and not cluttered at the same time. If you were to photograph a person on a mountaintop, for example, you might want to consider leaving the person towards the right side of the frame, while leaving the breathtaking view of everything below the mountain more to the left. The atmosphere it creates for the image would be different than that of leaving the person right in the middle of the shot. The person can still be the subject and off to the side. Try messing around with the idea.

Normally I'd have more to say, but uh... what exactly are you expecting of them?

I'm no photography artist, but I've seen/heard references to the rule of thirds. You can look up a little of that if you want. Basically it's just reason why the focus of your picture doesn't need to be the the centre.

Like comparing this:
http://www.findonvillage.com/p0558_l...sbury_0149.jpg

as opposed to this:
http://www.freefoto.com/images/15/19...erland_web.jpg

It's not that either one is better, but the one is centre-focused, the other is not.

Other than that, maybe take pictures of sunrises/sunsets. They usually look nice.

Thanks Invader and Vampyre (love those two pics btw!). I guess it is a matter of preference then... I definitely prefer the second of the tree pictures.
But I'll research the rule of thirds some.

i always find top hats liven up my pictures... so you could just photoshop some top hats onto those babies and boom goes the dynamite!:banana:

Another thing you could try is to try and take pictures that convey a type of atmoshpere, tone, or emotion. Kinda like music and art. Take pictures that you feel convey a certain type of message.

For example, you could go around taking pictures that convey a gloomy/depressed/sad tone, like a person's shadow in the wake of a dead tree. Then go the next day looking for pictures that convey a tone of excitement/entertainment, like children playing.

Thanks for the suggestion and the smile Xena, but.......... um...... no thanks. I think I'll stick with just the usual :D

That's an excellent suggestion, Vamp. I thought about it while driving yesterday and wondered how in the world I could do such a thing. I just take pictures of what interests me at the time or things I want to remember.
But then I asked myself: "Why?"

I really enjoy taking pictures when I get in the mood... so why not make an activity out of it and try to come up with something MORE?
I now have an assignment for when I move back to the Farm.
Thanks for the suggestion.

Yeah sure!

0x00000005
0x00008130
0x00000008

You just spoke a foreign language to me Slayer :D

Care to further explain what the numbers mean?