Keeko by KMassier

Katherine, in response to your blog request I am taking a peek at this photo. The subject matter is delightful and the its composure is not too bad either. well done !
What really lets this photo down is that the highlights all seem burned out. By that I mean the white areas have all lost their detail. It often happens because your camera may be tricked by the darker areas of the subject or background. To expose these correctly the camera has overexposed the lighter areas. I see that you have a Canon camera. I know nothing about canon cameras but I am pretty sure you will have a menu option that will allow you to see the Histogram of this photo. If you use Adobe photoshop you can see the histogram under the levels menu. The histogram is just a graph that displays all the brightness levels from absolut black on the left to pure white on the right. i suppsoe the ideal photo would have the graph just touching the left and right sides. This means that all brightness levels can be seen in the photo. I suspect you have used the camera in automatic mode. If so the you you should force the camera to meter on the lighter areas of the intended photo. I think you can do this on most cameras by focusing an a lighter area and then locking the exposure with AE-Lock. You could also try editing the levels in a Photo editing program such as photoshop. But by far the best advice is to set the camera to manual mode, making lots and lots of clicks and using the inbuilt camera tools work out the best solution yourself. Tis will of course maybe meen digging out the camera manual again and going through again and again !. There is a lot of info on the web about the histogram as it is a very important photography tool. I hope this has been of some help to you.
Keep Clicking !!
cheers
roelf

Tulip by jonrayner

The idea, lighting and composition is perfect, but.... (there is always a "but" isn't there. But I feel what lets this photo down just a little is the double reflection from the glass. You pick up the reflection from both the upper and lower surface of the glass due to its transparancy.
The ideal would to have used a bit of black acrylic plate or a crome mirror , both of which give a single reflection and are cheap to buy and easy to find via the internet. Never the less a lovely photo considering the tools you had to hand.
Cheers
Roelf