Originally posted by donlass Hard to articulate except to say It's just an aesthetic type of thing, a certain feeling I get when I see an interesting photo. I would like to be able to take a pic of a hole in the wall and make it look interesting, or a door or a cat or whatever. How to manipulate light in order to create something interesting in a photo? pic #1 could be more detail. pic #2 it's just a duck #3 out of focus/not sharp just doesn't "pop", uninteresting. #4 Is just a photo
#1 more details- close aperture more, but keep in mind that the background will be busy as well. Personally I think that the crop should be either tighter, or with more background space.
#2 Nothing wrong with the duck as a subject. It's just the angle which makes the duck boring, and your aperture settings, imo. Also the harsh light can be both: advantage and disadvantage.
#3 I like that shot, it just needs tuning up in LR or Photoshop. Check the macro club, and macro by any means thread here. You can learn about macro, then decide how much efforts to invest in macro. To me your picture is good as close up macro.
#4 Same here, it's nice shot, but need either flash, imo, or post processing.
I took liberty to slightly adjust two of your images in LR. What do you think?