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[stef]

This is absolutely not the place to learn the business aspects. It might be the place to get honest criticism, but that remains to be seen as the site develops.

 

I looked only at your website, not facebook.

 

Regarding your “people” section, tilting the camera does not make anything more interesting. It makes things more annoying. There are times to tilt an image. None of yours were those times. The kids looked pretty good, although the light was a little too hard for that kind of portrait, and they’re probably a little overexposed. The b/w shot had good tonality and could’ve been good, but was ruined by the composition. Besides being tilty, there’s also a pole coming out of his head. All website sections are titled “Test Album Page”, and it looks somewhat haphazard.

 

“Transportation” contains nothing interesting or very creative. It might be fine for a webzine saying “we were there”, but nothing in that section took any creativity of yours to make. So for editorial work and tearsheets, great… otherwise, not portfolio material.

 

The long exposure night shot you did of the bridge with your 7-leaf lens cranked down is cute. I’m glad you didn’t tilt it. Your Places is better than your other stuff, but you overprocessed it. For the most part, you added too much local contrast, causing a bad HDR look from non-HDR images. All the disadvantages, without any of the advantages. Again, I liked the tonality of the b/w and the composition was decent. I also like that you saw that image and captured it. That shows you’re looking for the shots. You don’t need 3 shots of lightning in a portfolio, unless you’re looking for a job as a tornado chaser or something. Plus, while they’re great shots of lightning, they are bad shots. Poor cropping, composition, strange color, stuff in foreground, etc.

 

Overall a few of your people shots were good, but need improvement. A few of your Places shots were acceptable, but only the b/w and the bridge stood out as good images. The rest was not professional quality for many varying reasons above.

 

You have an honest assessment of your skill and what you need to look at and what you need to study. Before you worry about business, worry about photography… THEN worry about business twice as much. You don’t need this website to tell you anything.

 

If you ask me tomorrow, I might disagree with myself since I liked some of your stuff, but my verdict is: You are a fauxtographer. But you kind of knew that.