Photography - The Novice vs. the Pro

My old Fuji Finepix Z20 was taking too many photos that weren't sharp--particularly in low light. Perhaps the flash on it is getting old or slower, or maybe it was dropped one time too many. Anyway, I broke down and got a new one, a Z30 this time. It was quite cheap as cameras go--$79!

It has a new feature that lets you automatically take consecutive shots so you can get good individual and group shots. You press the timed shutter and the camera searches for a face(s) and focuses on a still face and then takes a photo, and waits a couple of seconds and does it again and again. This way you can easily get a good shot and instead of looking at the camera, you can look at the subject and make suggestions, or you can go and get in the photo without rushing. This is a cool feature!

We put this feature to use when we heard from Korea that Julie needed a portrait for her yearbook there. Here are our trials and errors as we strove to get a good portrait.

The word was, the shot had to be from the knees up, so here was our first shot. Later, I made the background solid with Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Then, we tried again after having her change clothes and lose the glasses.

Then we thought, "Oops! She's probably supposed to be sitting down." So here's the next shot.

The background is a down blanket.

This is the same photo with an edited background.

Here is another outfit with a different background.

The strange thing is, the photographer over there, who said he could manipulate any photo we sent, said none of these we sent would do. He insisted we get a "professional" to take a picture, so it would be "bright enough".

This is the professionally take photograph. What do you think? Do you like it better than mine or mine better than this one?