Hi from a PH and photography newbie

[Established 1984]

Hi, I've been lurking on PH for a while now and having recently got a 450d thought I'd join post a few shots I took on a trip to the Middle East.

Some of your guys work is amazing and I was hoping you could give me some advice on how to improve mine, both in the camera and with post processing techniques. These haven't had anything more advanced than a crop/straighten done to them but I have PS Elements 7.

With 1 & 3 how could I have made the moon look more like the moon and less like a giant white dot, whilst not losing the exposure in the other parts of the pictures?

and any tips on making the colours more vibrant, I tried increasing the saturation but that didn't really give the results I was after...

Cheers,

Est. '84

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[SamHH]

Hi. The way I'd do the moon thing would be to take two photos, one exposed for the moon and another exposed for the rest of the scene. Alternatively if you take the picture in RAW, you can adjust the exposure on the computer. Then you can merge them in a photo editor. The merging in photo one should be pretty easy but it might be more difficult in photo three given how much of the sky is lit up by the moon. Regarding the colours, I'd just suggest playing around with the contrast and saturation. Someone else will probably be able to give you a proper answer to that though.

Really like the second sunset photo BTW.