New to Photography

Hi,

Up until today I've been working in game design - creating games and graphics, programming mostly though.
I've looked at some photographs and wanted to learn a bit more on photography. I pretty much know nothing, and was looking for tips to get better and better.
I've tried taking shots here and there and I got one shot I wanted to show and get feedback on. I never seem to be able to get to the quality some photos are in, would really love to know how those are done (even with digital editing).

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

resize buddy

That's a great shot.
Resize to 800 wide for the web.
And keep shooting.

This photo is not a bad start. I'll not a couple things that might or might not help:

It looks like your focus point is the end of the dog's nose. That means your son's eyes (is it your son?) are just starting to fall out of focus. Since eyes are usually the main point of a portrait, the rule says they should always be in focus.

Also about the eyes: there is no "catchlight", no brightness, in the eyes. In great portraits you often see a reflection of the light source in the eyes, to make them sparkle. Finally, the eyes and skin around them are darker than some of the folliage, so they don't stand out. The green of the leaves is nice, but might distract in this case from the primary subject.

Those are just a couple of my ideas.

Greg

romacstudios,
First like others said make the photo smaller, some of us still use 1024x768 and some still use modems!
Second how about telling us what equipment you used and the settings you set at for taking the photo?

My personal opinion is that the green in the foreground is too much of a distraction. Second like GPR1 said, the focus point isn't on the eyes, and a fill in flash would help bring more life to it.
Just my 2 cents

PS. Oh and welcome to photography

Thanks of the comments, I resized the image.

How would one put more emphasis on the subject of the image (put let notice on the green of the image)

Not much you can do about the foliage in front except clip it off or tie it down (some nature photographers carry ribbons, strings or rubber bands for just that purpose). Opening up (using a larger aperture, smaller f/number) will help the background blur more. Using flash to fill in the boy and dog will let you use a faster exposure which will let the background go darker.

Post this in the people forum for some C&C. And read what others are posting/saying.

Welcome to the forums.
It actually looks pretty good. I think it just needs a little Shadows/highlight work and a contrast boost.