A few animal and outside shots

[Tunerfreak]

Im quite a newbie when it comes to photography. Photography is one of the few visual arts I havent become in tune with much. My parents and others recognised me as a good photographer and brought a new family camera, the Canon Powershot S2IS (I think) Its pretty complicated but I play Gran Turismo 4 alot (Ps2 game) and the photomode in GT4 has helped me alot (Haha videogames aiding education, lets explain that to schools)

Anyway, I was sick off school today and walked around taking alot of shots, I selected these 6 as some semi nice ones. My passion is really cars, but at home theres not alot of drag racing on my back lawn

So anyway, heres the shots -








This is my first post here also, I hope this forum can help build some skills up.

[conspired]

I like the animal shots. I think they're decent, but if you really want to get into photography, there are definately things that you could work on. I don't have anything specific to point out, but just think about color, composition, etc. And of course, try not to use the auto or preset modes and work with shutter or aperture priority instead.

I have a Canon Powershot S2 IS as well, but it's pretty new. I haven't worked much at all with it so far. I've seen that it's pretty good for macro shots, but what do you think about wide-angle landscape shots or have you not tried any yet? And also, what do you think of the focusing? I don't think the S2 IS focuses as well as the S1 IS, and I've heard other people have trouble with it, though the focusing in your shots look good.

[Etra1n]

the second and third are good...the others just seem to have lighting problems....but ive never taken a photo course or have done this myself so dont take my criticism heavily

[Tunerfreak]

Thanks guys, I use the M mode on the S2, then I can adjust each as I like, I spose thats not a good idea though.

I havent had the chance to gee out with this camera for any landscape shots or anything, but my town dosnt really have any good photography spots anyway, im on my restricted liscence so I might go out sometime and find a nice spot.

As for the focusing, yes I do find the S2 to be quite a hassle sometimes, and its really frustating trying to shoot animals. The grey cat (Holly) pretty much hates me and wants to run away, the black rabbit (Mischeif) just wont stop moving and exploring. Of course the statue is still and the ginger cat is lazy. theres really no way to tell if the camera is going to focus right in a certain condition until its displayed on my pc. The camera seems to need alot of sunlight so you can get a good shot in focus.

As for the lighting, the last one was supposed to resemble some sort of artistic shilloute, but I suppose it just looks weird, and its really difficult to get good lighting on that chair while maintaining focus and clarity.

As for where I would like to take photography, the female body sounds like a great subject to try but im only 16, and I would love it if my town had some great landscapes but there really isnt much greatness around here. As I mentioned before I have a great passion for cars, and I always bring my camera donw to the drag racing at teh local strip to fire off some shots, I get paid for it too sometimes when sending them into magazines and I actually designed the local drag racing clubs website so im in charge of getting each meets shot up there on the site, the website is www.southerndragways.co.nz . Don't laugh too hard, it was like my first website, and im getting paid $500NZD for it. Ive got some shots on there from the meets but they arnt that great, theres wire and people everywhere which is annoying and all the ones on the site right now are from an older camera.