not a wedding but an engagment party

[hunghimself]

hi,

i'm new as if you can tell. this is my first time shooting people or anything that has to do with human.

my camera set up:
Canon 20D
Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM
Canon Speedlite 430ex

first time using the flash as well. i think i did well for a noob. you may leave any comments. negative or positive. it will greatly help me understand my mistakes.

here are the pictures, sorry im too lazy to html it so i'm going to just link it
http://photobucket.com/albums/f358/lilhungyboi2/

if you guys want to know what i look like. i'm the dude in red shirt.

[VanceW]

Howdy! :)

Look's like you had a lot of family and friends show up!

Seem's you worked mostly in the horizontal, you may want to mix it up more, and use the vertical aspect to get more full body shots. Especially when shooting a smaller group of say two or three people.

Also noticed you lost people's feet in a bunch of your shots. You may want to look out for that. Basically what you want to do is just before hitting the shutter button, have a look in your viewfinger, of all four corners, just to confirm you're getting what you want in the frame.

Event photography is tough. There's always something going on, and you'll be twisting your head off trying to keep up with everything. Just stay at it!

[bpuppy]

Some cool moments caught, but there's way too much depth-of-field ... which would be the catch with that lens you're using ... the backgrounds are distracting. Also, you should employ the rule of thirds more often.

[SuzyView]

Great galleries, bpuppy & the first guy (if you could put your real nickname on the bottom of your post, we can call you more useful names, just a thought).

The outdoor shots are a problem for Orientals, I am one and know the black hair in the light issue. You may want to use the flash outside because it balances out the shadows and the pictures are overexposed in some places and underexposed in front of the people. Depth of Field is not going to happen well with the 28-135 IS. If you want truer portraits with good focus on the subjects only, you'll have to consider a prime.

My son loves going diagonal in his pictures and it's always his picture because no one else does that in our family. It's cute, up to a point. When we view a slideshow on screen, you can see everyone twisting to get the right view. The diagonal is mainly used for effect. Doing it a lot distracts, and in my son's case, makes me crazy because I can't do that with printed photos in a frame.

Did you shoot in RAW, by chance. That can help you lighten up the dark shots a lot.

Welcome, and enjoy the forum. Events are my specialty and my curse. :)

[PIXI_666]

You have the right idea, and i think your shots are great, but i also think shooting some portrait shots rather than landscape could be benifical, and bpuppy is right, maybe a bit more softer DOF and some little techniques like Rule of 3rds would work nicely.

They are quite candid shots, but i guess there's no real "Formality" to an engagement party except party and maybe a speech or 2 hehe...but i think your doing great, criticism can be good though to improve things, but keep your own style.

Some types of "Engagement" shots would have been incorporated well, maybe if you asked the "Couple" to go with you for 45 minutes, take some shots at the park jsut those 2 etc.

Keep it up - and definately post more when you take some! :)

Del

[hunghimself]

thanks everyone for the comments. i'm still learning. there's a lot to go. any keywords i should search up for? i'm currently trying to figure out wat types of lens are availiable. for example, i read around here and there are some terms that i've never heard of. how to adjust the settings around for different types of shooting. all your comments and help are well appreciated.

[PIXI_666]

i think that if you slowly post new questions that you have, you will eventually start to get some good knowledge, that's all i did...and i have only been here 3 months, with studying books and net sites constantly...getting some experience, reading my manual back to front 6 thousands times lol

I find if i read up on something, i go out and practice until i have it perfect...otherwise it just scares me to go back to it because i couldn't get it right!!!!

Stick to it :)

Del