Weekend Photography update

[petardier]

I've been considering upgrading to a full SLR. To help figure what I want, I rented a Canon 7D and a 300mm telephoto for a week. I took a trip to the Franklin Park to try it out today. Here's one of the photos I took:

From Web Stuff

In the original, you can see the texture of the tiger's tongue.

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

Nice!

I need the motivation to take my photography to the next level. Have you taken any classes or read anything recently that worked for you?

[petardier.livejournal.com]

In case I haven't mentioned it recently, you often have very good photos in your blog.

I'm mostly self-taught. There's probably easier ways to learn. ;-)

Scott Kelby's "The Digital Photography Book, volume 1" is an interesting approach. It shows you a picture and then describes what you have to do to get a similar result. He does also slip in a lot of general tips too. If you don't have the patience for a lot of theory, this might be worth a try. If you like the first one, you should know that Volumes 2 and 3 have overlaps with 1, so don't get all three. One of them can be skipped, but I forget which. He tries to keep the books light and humorous, but his sense of humor doesn't always work for me.

I've got another book that gets much more into the theory, physics etc. I can dig up the name if you're interested. I learned a lot from it, but I don't think it's a good starting point.

I took a class on Lightroom from Cambridge Adult Education last summer. Lightroom is a program that lets you repair and/or improve photos. I don't use Lightroom a lot just now, but it's nice to what's possible.

Cropping is the editing tool I use the most right now. It used to be fill light, but moving up from a point and shoot seemed to reduce the need for fill light.