Hey adem,

I like the color and contrast in the third picture. However, the first and the second need a little more controls over the midtones. I'm not too good with gimp, but I think you can add a little contrast or tweak the midtones to give it a pseudo-hdr looking. Also, as much as the contrast is good in the darker parts, I like the gaussian blur-looking effect on the brighter parts. Apart from the slight tweaks, they were done well, man.
--Kiran

I like #1, #2, #4 the most with #2 my favorite.

I like what you did here with the almost 60ish sort of style.

I thought #1 would have been maybe better if just a hair tighter focal to move her more out of the center and eliminate some of the empty space.

#2 hmm I'm not sure if I'd change a thing really i like it!

I think most of them are kind of showing the limits of range on the camera, but that you made a good compromise given the circumstances.

That's cool you're using the gimp, I often use that as well.

thanks for sharing these!

How do you like it? I try looking at it on my laptop when I boot into ubuntu, but then it always seems too daunting to me.

Anyway, I like the shots.. Except the sun becomes the focus of the image when it takes up that much space. Composition wise, I'd have the sun out of frame, and have the object (person) off to the side (rule of thirds), while leaving some empty space in front of (or behind) the object.

Taking the sun out would probably give the image more contrast as well..

Then sharpen it up a bit and you'd be good to go...

I'll have another go at Gimp tomorrow afternoon :)

I use GIMP as well as PSE. I find that there are many plugins that make using the GIMP much easier. There is the plugin registry as well as various other sites. Make sure you download the ones that are compatible with version 2.4 since there was an overhaul of the script-fu system for that version. Hope that helps.

which makes Gimp more photoshop like and easier to use perhaps. I haven't tried but a buddy of mine speaks highly of it.

Alas looks like the site may be down, hope it's not a defunct project.

Hey all thanks for the advice. Really, I started using GIMP because I didn't want to shell out for photo shop. Many of the commonly used features are similar, just is different locations or named slightly different. The first two pictures are un-edited. The second two I adjusted levels, saturation, contrast, and applied a filter to give it that "soft glow look," nothing too fancy. Can't complain about GIMP, it's free!

I'd say your experiment was a success.

I like #2 and #4 the best. My only suggestion would be to try more shots without the sunglasses.

OT: Where is this place and what kind of flowers are those?

My favorite is the third one, no sun glasses, not so much direct sun light. For my taste, not enough contrast, but perhaps it's more artistic this way?

No idea what's the flower, but just saw plenty of these during the weekend in different colors, pink, purple and blue.

Thanks again for the advice. The third shot seems to be sort of polarizing... Agreed, should have done more without the sunglasses. Just so happens that the pics with the glasses turned out the best, oh well.

I took the pictures at the Weyerhauser corporate campus in Federal Way, WA. They have a bunch of open fields and trails for people to use, pretty nice of them. The flowers I believe are foxglove.

or Digitalis, they seem to be excellent this year.
Michael.

They're Lupins. Fox gloves are abundant in S. England now, I don't know where you are - but are they wild? Super shots too.

Hm maybe they are lupins, I'm no flower expert. But yeah I'm pretty sure they are wild, just growing in this huge field outside of Weyerhauser's corporate campus (near Seattle, WA, USA)

Definitely not Foxgloves.