Hi everyone,

I've checked in on this site a number of times. Many of you have probably seen my pics on the canoecountry.com message board website (I know Nibi has). I'm very amateur but love taking pictures so I thought I'd see what I could learn here. Here is my first offering: (hopefully, my linking works).



I've always liked this kind of picture. Would it be better if the apperture was set to allow for more focus in the background?

Sorry it's taken so long for the welcome -- Personally, I've been having problems accessing this site for awhile. Danged pop-up ads have been crashing my browser .

These photos are harder than they look -- trust me, I've tried them. The problem is that they would be best if the background wasn't noticable at all. You need to somehow get a flat, neutral background that doesn't detract from the needles or the drops but that provides enough contrast so you can see both the dark needles and the light water droplets. I haven't found the answer yet. Yours is a very nice attempt though. If anything, you might want to go with an even wider aperature on this to further blur out the background details. That would keep the viewer's attention on the needles and droplets where I think you really want it to be. Properly used fill flash, highlighting the foreground while darkening the background a bit might also help.

Larry