tripsis

As long as the moderators aren't overwhelmed with the amount of threads that they have to move (I don't think they are, but I could be wrong), then I see no need for a change.

This is my first time doing this so go easy on me :ohnoes: The focus isn't perfect in all of them.. [hide=7 Images]#1 #2 #3 #4 - Focus isn't great :( #5 - Again, focus isn't great. #6 #7 [/hide]

Congratulations! :D And excellent future goals ;) Good luck!

Ahh okay :) Thanks!

Cumulative 3.3 - 3.4 and high of 3.5, I think.

Only if my boyfriend could live forever with me. And even then, I'm not so sure...

I like your new one a lot :) The colours are very nice. Do you have a slightly larger version?

Would you reccomend investing in a tripod? Unless you feel you particularly NEED one, then you can definitely get by without one. Just practice practice practice and you will get much better at getting the focus correctly. Since I use a macro lens, my method may be slightly different than yours, but here's what I do: I set the magnification I want and then slowly rock back and forth ever so slightly, going in and out of focus, taking pictures as I go. Sometimes when you take a picture when your subject is out of focus, it can actually end up in focus because you move at the last second when you take the picture. I usually end up with a ton of pictures, but I'm almost guaranteed a keeper than if I just took one or two. After you practice some more and you still feel like you could do better but aren't getting there for some reason, then you could consider a tripod. I have one, but almost all - if not all - of my water drop pictures are hand held and with natural lighting (no flash).

Nice job littleboy! :D The focus looks like it's on the small drops closer to the front of the leaf, rather than on the big drops in the middle of the leaf. But it's definitely good for one of your first water drop pictures! :D Getting the focus to be absolutely perfect when you're working this close to your subject definitely takes some practice. When you say, "Standard Canon Eos 450d Lens used," do you mean you're using the kit lens (EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS)?

Yeah the conditions definitely weren't ideal. Low lighting, fast movement (dancing), and flash wasn't allowed. I loved his pose though :) I agree. Hopefully my next eye shot will be better! Since this one wasn't planned (and taken during math class), I didn't really have time to ask her to fix her makeup :lol: She actually tried to force me to delete the picture when she saw the mascara under/almost in her eye :lol: Maybe I will be able to convince my sister to pose for eye pictures for me sometime.. hmm.. Thanks a lot for your comments :) I know #4 isn't the best. You can refer to my response to Ouchy. I had to use high ISO (causing noise), no flash (causing motion blur) and the poor lighting didn't help :( But I thought that his pose was very classy, so I couldn't resist not posting it!! And it's actually my friend's iris, not mine ;) I am trying to increase my activity ;) Glad to see that it has not gone unnoticed! Thanks for the link! Yes I have seen it, but it's nice to see it again. I definitely would LOVE to try to get an eye photo with my kenko extension tubes attached. I'm dying to see how that would turn out. Of course I'd have to convince my sister to model for me.. she's not always psyched about that. And yes, I have a bit of an obsession with water drops :lol: I'm really dying to try out some reflections in water drops. I'll have to get some more practice in with my kenko extension tubes though. They give me close to a 2x life-size ratio, and the higher the better for water drop reflections.

[hide=5 Photos]#1 - Taken in my school's garden. #2 - Taken in my school's garden. #3 - Taken at my sister's dance performance (this is her). #4 - Taken at my sister's dance performance. #5 - Taken in math class, in less than ideal settings (icky glare :( :( :(). Kind of cliche, but I've always wanted to take a decent eye shot. [/hide]

Are you sure you don't want to enter that? That's a [/contest] right there. Wow thanks guys :lol: I certainly didn't expect that response :lol: I may end up entering one of those, since I have a feeling that my laziness will prevail.

Today I woke up at 7am. I could have slept in until 8am since I had a free period first thing, but I decided to go early to photograph some things in my school garden. So I volunteer to drive my sister to school (my parents usually take her on Thursday mornings). Half way to school, I realize that I forgot my camera at home (I was in a slight rush this morning)..... So I curse myself in my head, continue taking my sister to school, then turn around, go back home to get my camera, and continue on to school. I took a bunch of photos in the garden that I'm really pleased with, and even a few on the way to the garden. About 10 minutes before my first class started, I got a hot chocolate, had a fun chat with the Dean of Students who was getting a coffee, and then continued onto my first class. I had three classes, then came home. I spent about 1-2 hours listening to music while editing my photos and converting them from RAW to JPEG. Then I uploaded them to DeviantArt, browsed DA and Tip.it a bit, took a nap and just woke up ~15 minutes ago and got changed. In 25 minutes I am leaving to go out to dinner and then go to my sister's dance performance. Then I will be coming home and taking some Christmasy photos for a Tip.it Gallery contest.

Well we finally decorated our Christmas tree last night, so I might get a few "potential pics" tonight :) Took a few last night while we were decorating, but I'm not entering them unless I don't get a chance to take more pictures before the deadline.. :P They were just 'for fun,' rather than trying to be artistic :lol: [hide=Not entering these pictures]#1 #2 - Decorating!!! #3 #4 #5 #6 - Crazy........ family..... Merry Christmas..? [/hide]

While I still hate even the smallest amount of homework, I cannot deny that it is helpful in small amounts. However, I also think we would do just fine without it. And at least at my school, teachers don't give small amounts. They give as much as they possibly can without consideration for the fact that we have 4-6 other classes, in addition to theirs. Students at my school are under so much stress and have little to no free time. Many of them stay up until the early hours of the morning finishing their homework or studying for impossible tests. Oh and three day weekends... time for fun and relaxation? Think again. Teachers at my school say, "I'm assigning extra homework because you have a whole extra day to work on it!" Yes we have a whole extra day, but it should be for our enjoyment and free time... NOT a day dedicated to completing extra homework. I think people with sports have it the worst. Their schedules are usually something like this: [*:dyw1dktk]7am - 3pm: School [*:dyw1dktk]3:30pm - 5:30pm: Sports practice [*:dyw1dktk]Maybe 30 minutes to 1 1/2 hour of free time, before dinner. But I actually know some people (admittedly those who are slow workers) who already start working on homework. at this time. [*:dyw1dktk]The rest of the night is dedicated to homework. It seems ridiculous to me that some people get by on such little free time. Parents at my school think that their children are so overworked that they sent a survey home to all the parents, asking how they felt about homework and how stressed their children were, so they could send the 'evidence' to the principal to back up their claims. There are so many surveys and articles out there about how students suffer from a lack of sleep, and from my observations, it's honestly completely because of school and too much homework.

Two reasons: the first one being what Kaphias alluded to. Why submit a picture now when you may take a picture later that you end up liking even more? And second of all, I haven't really had time to take a Christmas picture yet. I'll probably wait until we decorate our Christmas tree so I can play round with a few of those pictures.

Thanks for the comments you guys :) As alluded to in my first post, this was more of an experiment to get the technique down for creating the bubbles & foam. Now that I know what I'm doing, I can do it again, paying more attention to the photography and composition :) My light box is 1.5 x 2.5 feet. The frame is made from PVC pipes. White paper is taped on all sides except the front. I have clips connected to the top back pipe, which allows me to easily clip different coloured sheets of paper (or cloth) to the back, to change the background colour. Then as I mentioned previously, on the outside of the left and right sides of the box, I have two 100 watt equivalent light bulbs.

Luna is cute :) I'm a fan of unique and uncommon names that are not overly original and unheard of.

Christmas! :D I'm really excited for Christmas this year. I'm always excited, but never really in the holiday spirit, like I am this year. I'm so excited to start watching every Christmas movie I've ever heard of :lol:

Thanks so much :) I took a large, but shallow bowl and placed it in my home-made light box, which has a 100 watt equivalent light bulb on either side. I filled the bowl about half-way with Sprite (which was enough to just barely cover the fruit if I pushed them against the bottom of the bowl, since they float). I then placed the fruit inside the bowl, let them sit for a few seconds to gather bubbles, then snapped away :) #4, #5 and #6 were taken in the same fashion, but I used a flash in addition to the two 100 watt lights and I poured Sprite over the fruit as I took the pictures.

Just experimenting with some bubbles (Sprite) :) I honestly can't decide which one(s) I like best, so I'll post them all and let you guys decide :) [hide=6 Images]#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 [/hide] [hide=4 misc. photos from a few days ago]#7 #8 #9 - My cat walked through the 'set' while I was taking this photo: http://fc78.deviantart.com/fs38/f/2008/ ... azzyae.jpg . But I thought this version was nice too :lol: #10 [/hide]

What a great idea! It's nice to see more photography-related contests :) Hopefully I can put something together in time :D

Great idea. Having it remain as "[scam]" gives people the wrong idea. It could make a lot of innocent people look like scammers.

Agreed. I looked at about four, and they mostly look like quick vacation snapshots than anything else. They don't really seem to be driven by a desire to be 'artistic,' I guess.

I share the same thoughts. I think the first one is nice. I like the lighting, the colours, the tone, but the red (blood?) doesn't look right. It looks as if she and the background are completely together in a two-dimensional way.. because the red goes across her and the background almost as if she was a drawing on paper.. if you know what I mean? I don't like the second one much at all. I'm mostly not a fan of the background. I love the colours on the people, but I feel like they could have done so much better with a new background. I really don't like the vertical lines. I too don't like what you did with the hand on the third one. I don't feel like it fits.