Show us a photo you took that is a Technical Disaster.  

Is the lighting bad?  Goofy composition?  Noisy?  Shadows?

How could you have better taken the shot?  

Others: give input!  How can the photographer in the future take that shot from 'mess' to 'awesome'.  I think we can all use this as a learning experience.

Ready, Set, GO :)

I have tons of photos like this one:

I'm fascinated with clouds.  But they're difficult to photograph well IMHO, and I haven't succeeded yet.

I experimented with HDR in photoshop for this photo, which was probably not necessary, but fun to do nonetheless.  I'm really not impressed with adobe's HDR algorhythm, but my photo was bad to begin with so I can't really blame them.  The clouds were breathtakingly spectacular in person, but in my photos they're always just bleh.

In this photo, the composition is bad, although I have no idea how to compose clouds shots.  The focus is bad, possibly having to do with the wrong choice of lens, bracketed shots and moving clouds. I think the biggest problem is the composition.  There's nothing to contrast the clouds.  I feel like I need a beautiful meadow or a lake to stage the clouds.  But is it really impossible to show the beauty of clouds as we see them, without including anything from the ground?

Yelp, I think that photo is awesome! 

Ok...mine will be like elementary compared to the rest of you.  But you asked for bad pictures...I can supply those ALL DAY LONG!!!

YelpPuppy - that's a beautiful photo but I see what you mean.  All of my cloud shots are 'anchored' by some landscape interest below it.  I've seen great cloud photos though - and a common thing I notice is that you feel like you are 'parallel' to them and not just looking up.  You did capture that aspect well. . .but it's lacking depth maybe?  

It's possible that the clouds that photograph best are the ones that are really poofy and have lots of texture.  

I'm not help on the cloud photos :)

FMIL - The first one - fun idea, I see what you were trying to do!  Don't know how to fix it though :)  

The second one. . . .I know that the shutter speed was slow to capture the low light and you got camera shake.  Tripod maybe?  

More pro gals (Yelp, Brianne, Miller) would know how to capture that without a tripod.  I don't :)

Gonna go dig up one my my technical disasters. . . .

Here is one of mine . . . gotta work up the guts to post one of my 'what was I thinking when I took that' shots, but here is a start.

Sorry they are all Aspen photos - I just got a new computer and these are the only ones I've transferred so far. . . .

I feel like I was too short to capture this well - I needed to climb a tree or something to capture that plateau thing in the background and pull up over the trees a bit.  Grrr.

Another. . .I tried. . .had an idea, FAILED.  The fence was cool.  How could I have composed this a little better so that fence isn't just noise?

And finally. . .hahahaha. . .uhhh. . . . 

@FMIL, these photos have the same problem that we discussed in your other thread.  The shutter speed is too slow, so your involuntary muscle movement showed up in the photos.  If it's just snapshots of the family, use flash!  Flash is not particularly flattering, but most people don't mind.

The second shot - turn the ISO up to at least 1600.  That should be able to speed up your shuttter dramatically. But night scenes are tough without a tripod.  When you have to hand hold, take a deep breath, and press the shutter while exhaling.  Another school of thought is to press while holding the breath, but my personal experience is I shake more when i'm holding the breath, because I'm more tense.  Oh and leaning on a wall or a pole helps a lot. If there is nothing to lean on (no don't lean on your husband or anything that breathes), make sure you stand with feet apart wider than your shoulders.  You won't look pretty but it gets the job done lol!

@mountainbride, I need to keep trying!  I think it has to do with the humidity level, the lens and the shapes of the clouds.  One of these days I'll figure out a magic formula.

@mountainbride: The second picture is interesting. I think you needed to step a bit away from the fence so we can see the pattern of the fence.  And if you step back, we'll be able to see the top and bottom edges of the fence, which will make those pretty "leading lines"... I don't know if that makes sense haha. 

Pattern-wise, here's an example (not mine!)- if he stood too close to the fence, we wouldn't be able to see the pattern.

Here's an example of the "leading lines" that I was talking about: the top and bottom edges form a triangle, leading the viewer's sight to the other end.  It's not my photo either lol:

The last one--Did you want to focus on the green leaves or the yellow one?  It's odd that the focus is in upper right corner, when one expects the focus to be the vibrant yellow leaves.

yelp -  The bottom one I was trying to focus on the yellow leaves and TOTALLY missed the mark.  Bah.  

Thanks for the fence info - you are totally right.  I know I was in a hurry - my hubby was watching which always makes me nervous and I didn't really frame it well.  

I love the examples you picked out for the leading lines, yelp.  I'm a fan of those shots and your pointers will definitely help me out.