I would appreciate constructive criticism and ideas based off these photos from a recent trip I took to Door County, Wisconsin. I have been tinkering for a little while now in photography and would love to hear what others have to say about where I am as a photographer.
you are on the right path :)
I'm gonna try and give you some feedback.
Where you are as photographer, from these pictures i would say at the beginning. It seems you know your settings and you have a feeling for light, what's lacking is composition.
From the pictures you posted i wouldn't rate any higher than a 2 in the f-stoppers system, I'll write down why. In the first 4 the reason is composition.
1. It's a nice sky, but overall a boring image. I took plenty of those pictures when i started because it looks beautiful. But a sunset in itself is rarely a good subject. My hint for that situation would be to lower your perspective and use one of those flowers as subject. Maybe avoid having the sun in the frame but rather use side light and the vibrant sky.
2. Again, beautiful sky, lack of subject. Maybe go down and get one of those boats closer, or walk on the mole to use it as leading line.
3. Sky is getting even better, but still no subject. But too much foreground to be truly minimalistic. That bench also disturbs me a bit. Some of those rocks might provide a good foreground interest. If they do you should brighten them up a bit. In the current state the foreground is too dark to show real details.
4.I can see what you were trying to do, but i personally am not a fan ob the blurry tree and leaves taking up so much space of the frame.
5. Here you have a subject and it has somewhat interesting light on it. Maybe it can be improved in the editing room. Most distracting to me is the blown out highlights right behind it. But I'm not quite sure what to do about it. You could try and play around with it a bit in Lightroom.
Please don't take any of my words to harsh. I have taken pretty much exactly the same kind of pictures not too long ago. They are not bad pictures, they have beautiful skies the exposure is pretty much right, there is no excessive editing, they are just not interesting images for me or someone who wasn't there.
For me Composition is the hardest part about photography. You can learn the basics (correct exposure, basic editing) pretty fast and then the hard work begins to bring your picture from photo to 'art'.
That's where you are right now i would say.
Thank you! I see what you are saying and can learn from that!