Reply To: Critique my work please?

[MrsManiak]

Hi Abobeck!

First off, I’m still learning myself, so my critiques won’t be as thorough as anyone else’s.

http://www.aaronbobeckphotography.com/Portfolio/i-284hStq

The spot color. It draws your eyes to what is colored, and away from your subject. It’s tacky and overused (and usually screams faux). From what I understand though, if the client wants it, you do what they’re paying you for.. just don’t add it to your portfolio. That being said, when you do it, zoom all the way in and make sure you don’t miss a spot or color something that’s not supposed to be colored. You missed a part of the ball, and colored his fingers a bit.

http://www.aaronbobeckphotography.com/Portfolio/i-QQvzK79

I love this one, especially the framing. The girl on the left has a hot spot on her cheek, and honestly I don’t know how much of an issue that is in the professional world. If you had moved to the left and had them turn to face you (putting the sun more behind them and less from the side) I’m pretty sure that would have eliminated it.

http://www.aaronbobeckphotography.com/Portfolio/i-TFnF7dH

This one, I like it, but the edit is too bold for me. You missed a spot in the bottom right of the picture, the leaves are still green. When masking the left pillar, you also masked part of the gate and a few leaves. I’m not sure exactly what you used to change the colors, but I’ve done the same thing before by using a selective color adjustment layer in photoshop and playing around (http://i.imgur.com/EQnCjuf.jpg?1). That goes with the first critique though, make sure when you’re masking, zoom all the way in and use a smaller brush size to make sure you’re only masking what you intend to.

HDR isn’t really my style so I have nothing to add about those. Personally I don’t see you as a faux and I like a lot of your images.

Edit: I almost forgot, the white balance is slightly off on a few of them. You can do a few things to help you get proper WB when shooting. Some cameras will let you set kelvin temps, but if yours doesn’t, you can set it when you open the RAW file. https://fstoppers.com/post-production/learn-shoot-proper-white-balance-using-kelvin-temps-3328  I used that OR the “coffee filter over the lens” method to set WB before I got an expodisc.