Reply To: Brutal feedback needed. It's time for someone other than my mom to critique me.

[nesgran]

I’ll comment on broad categories as you have a lot of shots in there. Some things however I can say about all of them, don’t put blurry shots up there. A couple of random shots seem to be out of focus like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/annelisegrace/8412296265/sizes/k/in/photostream/ Just remove them as they drag down the rest of your shots and look at your shots much closer if they aren’t completely crisp. The next technical thing is your use of negative space that isn’t ideal, a number of your photos you have the negative space on the wrong side and often it ends up looking wrong. Also pulling off portraits where the subject is smack bang in the middle of the frame is difficult, a few of your shots it works but most it doesn’t. The rule of thirds works for a reason. There’s also a number of badly underexposed shots like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/annelisegrace/6118913174/ . There’s also a number of dismembered limbs floating about in your shots or you’ve chopped people off, either crop or clone stamp them out. I’m not sure what your aspirations are but from what looked like a business brochure I’m guessing you want to get paid for doing this.

Your portraits don’t pop. One or two you can use the lens flare low contrast look but the rest you need to think about your lighting. You are not using the natural light well enough to make them stand out and since you aren’t making up for it with off camera lights either the portraits look arty enough but don’t look good. In fact the oof shot I linked shows this well. You aren’t getting your subjects to stand out particularly from the back ground and because of the sun looking like it is at high noon you have a lot of shadows which shouldn’t be there like raccoon eyes and under chins. Other portraits the faces of people are dark and there is no interesting light play. It is an interesting shot but the lighting simply doesn’t work. This one http://www.flickr.com/photos/annelisegrace/8182885088/ you have got half the light already in there from the setting (?) sun giving you a nice rim light in the hair. There is however nothing to bring the face out of the wall and background which a single speedlight off camera with a softbox would do. The branches is not a good touch either and the eyes aren’t completely sharp.

I think the single thing that most will improve your portraits is a basic understanding of off camera lighting, a speedlight or two and some other accessories. Shots like this one http://www.flickr.com/photos/annelisegrace/8576946872/ you are having a light contest with the sun and unless you have enough oomph in your light setup it will look bad. This shot could indeed have been a good shot if the subject hadn’t been completely dark. Read through the strobist.com lighting 101, it will help you immensely.

 

Your stage shots suffer a little bit from the same, when the subject or at least the face isn’t lit up the photo most likely won’t be a good one, this one should have gone into the bin straight away http://www.flickr.com/photos/annelisegrace/6808361940/. A little bit of flare in a shot may look good or if the flare works together with the subject but if the flare is so severe it overpowers the contrast in the shot (which is naturally very high contrast) it doesn’t look good like in this http://www.flickr.com/photos/annelisegrace/8575824807/ That shot you could have used the blue light in the background as a rim light if you’d taken a step or two to the left and let the light shining on his face act as a main light making him pop a lot. You could probably bump your ISO a bit to get a better shutter speed, 1/60 isn’t great for a moving subject.

Your black and white shots suffer from a slightly too low contrast in general, when you convert a digital shot to b&w you generally need to add more contrast.

You need to a be a little more selective in your selection of shots if you intend to use the flickr as a portfolio and put less of the random shots up.

Keep shooting though, you have a good enough foundation to stand on but certain areas you are deficient, mainly in the use of light in your shots. I think it looks worse because you aren’t selective enough either bringing the average quality down. For $150 you could get yourself a yongnou flash, a pair of radio triggers, a light stand and a cheap softbox or umbrella. Build yourself a reflector from some tinfoil and cardboard and you have a great start for lighting up your subjects.