My tortoise Amos

[MelGarratt91]

Meet Amos. He's around 100 years old now.
Although when you think of tortoises you think of them being slow, and probably not doing much, my tortoise is a very michevious character. :p
A couple of his adventures include: escaping from the garden and being brought back by the police a couple of days later (they found him wandering down a road), he's managed to find a way into the school field on the back of our garden and hibernated there for the winter, he's got stuck under our shed, and is always trying to get into my mums tomato plants and squash them!

My mum inherited him from my Gran and Grandad, and so along with the fact he's been a great character himself he has alot of sentimental value and feelings as well. So i thought a nice gift for my mum would be a framed picture of him. Though the pictures i have found of him on the computer aren't all that great and it's started to get colder and has been raining the last few weeks over here, so Amos doesn't come out as much.
I don't have very good editing software, and my skills are limited so i'd very much apprectiate it if someone else could edit one of these pictures.
Lots of colour would be nice, and somehow capture his micheviousness more.

Thanks

Mel

[coffee]

Hi Mel, An edit on these images are difficult because of the exposure issues most have, not to mention the focus problems. I did take what I thought was the best of the bunch and cleaned it up some. First image is the original, second is the edit.

I don't know what equipment you are using, but if you look at the majority of these shots, the focus is not hitting where it needs to be, the eyes. It is either front or back focusing, and I suspect it's due to you using full auto mode on what ever camera you are using. And of course there is nothing wrong with full auto, but you are letting the camera control everything, and when it comes to focus especially, the camera decides where it thinks the focus should be. A lot of the time, it's going to get it wrong. I would say out of the 5 shots, at least 3, if not 4, the focus isn't hitting the head of the turtle. Now,on one shot I think you were just too close to the turtles face to get a focus lock, but the other did achieve focus on the shell of the legs.

I don't know if your camera allows you to select a focus point where you make sure that point is where you want focus to be, but if you do, I suggest manually selecting that point as the point of focus, and let the camera take it from there. You will find many more "keepers" if you take control of where the camera is focusing.

[MelGarratt91]

That's lovely, thank you.

I agree with the comments on the quality of the photos. I'm not sure what camera they were taken with. They were off my mum's computer.

Though that is something i have wanted to learn how to do with camera - Getting the focus right, cause the auto focus does annoy me. The other day when i was trying to get a picture of a bee on a flower, there were several points where it was in focus, but it being in auto focus it just never stuck there. I'm not sure if i'm able to do it with my camera though, its just a cheapish plain digital one. I'll have to look into it.

I'm also trying to save up for a better camera in which i can start taking better photos and be more in control. :)

Thanks for the comments.

[Pat]

Hi Mel. A couple more chelonaian (tortoise, turtle or terrapin)renditions for you. I must say he/she is looking particularly mischievous in the second. :)

[MelGarratt91]

Hahah. Very nice thanks pat.
I'm sure my mum would love that! :D

[Kathleen]

My dogs would get a hoot out of having a pet tortoise.

[MelGarratt91]

We have cats next door - and they just plain don't know what to make of him!
I think they're actually scared, cause they've never seen something like him before. :p

[Kathleen]

LOL, that's funny! I'd be alittle scared too if I was a cat. Twice as big as me!

[jmtc]

I had great fun playing with the old boy (or girl!)
Hoipe you like the smile
regards
Jim

[StephenK]

That was funny Jim, the smile is a natural!! :^)

I was playing around looking to see how much of the shell texture could be rescued from the over exposure.
Had to do some operating on the second one! :^)

[jmtc]

love all that texture on the face - nice one Stephenk