"a bit at sea" means "lost" in a mental sense - having a lack of available landmarks.

I don't think you comments were offensive - the micrographs do nothing for me either. The choice of subjects available to us is close to infinite and whatever we choose, others will prefer different ...

Welcome, Digidiva. As Mike said, lots of UK people here - I am from Lincoln but would like to be from Northumberland - when that lottery ticket does its job!

John M Wrote: (Feb 8, 2014, 14:52) -- ikisshorses Wrote: (Feb 8, 2014, 03:21) -- Trying to catch the photographer in the horses eyes. Alone with the animal and no means of constraining her. Friend...

ikisshorses Wrote: (Feb 8, 2014, 03:21) -- Trying to catch the photographer in the horses eyes. Alone with the animal and no means of constraining her. Friends enough that she came to have a look a m...

Good question, Irma. I am not interested in pretty but occasionally one of my pictures will be pretty - that does not detract from the picture for me, it just is not something I look to achieve. For...

Ed, you need to use more feather when selecting the sky-line to avoid the dead line of the cut. And I am with MrB on the colour saturation - the colours are far too bright.

In general, I do not like 'cotton wool' water, either. While the effect is frequently overdone and shows a lack of imagination, it can be effective as it is here.

The only fault I can find is that you used a 15mm lens - which I just don't like - but my personal taste apart, it is a good shot. Might be worthwhile using the the lens correction facility in Photos...

I would not touch it at all. A very atmospheric picture. Well done.

I use Gimp - it is excellent. Unless you are doing a lot of graphic art, it is all you need - Photoshop is overkill for photographers. I find Gimp easy to use - not sure why Ed finds it has a steep ...

I prefer the first picture being dark. The dark trees then act as a frame for the fields beyond. Making the trees lighter makes them the picture.

Being an old thread does not stop it from being interesting, surely?

If you buy from a proper shop in town you get to handle the camera first, get shown basic operation and have someone to go to to ask any questions you might ever have - and someone to show it to if it...

I like that.

Following on from Ed's post, might be worthwhile to check that they will let you in with a DSLR.

Highest ISO available, I would think. If it was me, I would be in place as early as possible and do some test shots before the concert starts.

I like the first one. It hardly looks like HDR (which is a good thing), so many people go over the top with HDR . I think it might be even better as monochrome - the colours do not bring so much wit...

I would like the first one more if there was more depth of field- it is a tad too shallow for my taste. The second picture I would convert to monochrome and lose the red sky. OK, I am not a sunset f...

Raw photographs are HUGH. Get the biggest hard drive you can afford. My first digital camera gave files of around 2 Mbytes my current one gives files of nearer 30 Mbytes. My next camera will give ev...