Ok so this is my first real outing where I had a chance to take some good shots after months and months of reading and studying up on everything that is photography!These were taken at the botanical garden in Dallas Texas and are the ones that I think turned out pretty good...Please let me know what you think is good and what i could do to make them better. There are a few at the end that are HDR.Thanks in advance,RookieTried to make the water smooth with a longer shutter speed...Following are HDR

Very jealous....it was in the low 40's today with lots of rain over on the east coast!! I really like the #2 and #7. Well done.

So many beautiful captures. Well done!

This sure shows that it is spring time! I love all those colors outside.Tim -- New gallery: http://www.pbase.com/tvw/downunder

Since you asked for C&C very nice colors and exposure for the most part. A couple of items for improvement might be to watch out for the tendency to center your subjects, or split your shots 50/50 between land and sky. Watch out for blown highlights in the slow water shot (may want to consider a neutral density filter) and the blue water in the second hdr shot is a sign that you may have pushed things a bit too far in PP (IMHO). Lastly, the horizon seems slightly off in the last shot. Overall a good effort. I hope you don't think I'm being too critical, but when I ask for c&c, that's the kind of feedback I look for. Your time studying has been well spent. Look forward to seeing more of your work in the future. -- http://araasch.zenfolio.com/

Thank you for the advice! By no means do I think you are being over critical. This is the reason I post the photos on here in the first place. I love getting the feedback from the more seasoned vets and it really helps me learn more and look at future shots in a different manor.Thanks again for the comments.

Rookie321wrote:These were taken at the botanical garden in Dallas Texas and are the ones that I think turned out pretty good...Please let me know what you think is good and what i could do to make them better.How fortunate you are to be near a botanical garden! I also frequent one in Riverside, California.Your low-angle compositions are very nice.Some of the flowers are over-exposed. I'm guessing you let the camera meter, and there was harsh sunlight on the flowers.I would suggest that you carry a piece of cardboard in your pack - about 8"x10" so as to block the sun from hitting the flower, creating "open shade" around the flower. I did that with this Rosa Eyepaint bloom in the botanical gardens:It's almost necessary to manually underexpose flowers so that texture detail can be seen in the petals. This will often require a slow shutter speed, so for that, and for holding a card with one hand, I always take my tripod to the gardens.Do some tests, where you underexpose at various stops to see what works with which colors.I hope you will post some of the more exotic flowers you find there!regards,-rich

As a "newbe" myself and having read book and articles also, I would try to compose with a less busy background when you can. Try blurring the backgrounds more if you can.