Help Please?

Hey all. I've always wanted to do photography, but am terrible at it! I'm more into taking picture of people at the moment, but they turn out terrible! I want to be able to take shots like Shawn Lasiter (check him out - hes pretty good!) but can't get to grips with it.
What makes his photos so good? Is it his way off taking the photo, or his editing that makes them brilliant? I have a 12.2 megapixel camrea, & i still cant get to grips with it! If anyone has some tips, please share with me, as I need all the help I can get!

Thanks,
Cole

Well, I would suggest getting familiar with your camera. I don't really know how much you know, but start with the basic components of exposure (aperture, shutterspeed, ISO), and then work your way up. Get familiar with shooting with manual settings. Also, for portraits, lighting is a huge deal. I would suggest reading about studio lighting, or outdoor lighting. Strobist.com is a good website for this, but to me it seems slightly overrated... Haha Just read as much as you can. Do google searches for "portrait photography lighting outdoors" and such. The main thing to keep in mind is where your light is coming from and how it's hitting the subject. Focus is also important. Make sure that for portraits, the face and eyes are definitely in focus, unless you are intentionally not doing this.

Judging by Shawn's work, I would say it's not the editing. He has some nice shots with studio lighting, and his outdoor shots look like they're mainly done with natural light... Just think of how to position your light sources, and get the basics down! Good luck!! Hope this helps!

Lighting Lighting Lighting....

The "megapixels" of your camera is about the least important aspect of photography.

Cole:

as warmguy indicated, getting to know the camera and how it behaves is the most critical step in getting bad shots to decent. How you do this is sit down with the manual and the camera at hand. Read everything picking up the camera as it describes where the function you read about takes place on the camera itself. Use a yellow highlighter to reference important things in the camera manual.

Read the manual again.

Start applying what you've learned from reading the manual and hands-on experience with the camera to your shots. Here's another example.

Before buying a real DSLR, I had a Canon A540 point and shoot camera. Basically used it in auto mode most of the time. When a need to get better shots arose, I pulled out the manual and started reading. It's amazing how good a shots you can get with even a P&S once you learn how to operate some of the camera's features! My 'snapshots' from the P&S turned into 'decent images' pretty quickly.

Learning on a P&S translated well to my first DSLR and shortened the learning curve because I already knew the basic concepts.

After you become familiar with your camera, the book Understanding Exposure is a great basic book to read, understand and learn from. At this point, your 'decent' shots will likely turn into 'GOOD' shots!

DSLR isn't as easy as buying a camera and getting good shots. It's like buying the same driver as Padraig Harrington uses and expecting to hit 320 bombs down the middle just because you have the tool. Doesn't work that way, unfortunately.

dave