Reply To: Here Goes Nothing… Critique (+ Intro)

[nesgran]

A couple of things, do not go into business with your friends. I got seasick from looking at the first and bored looking at the second.  As a purely professional thing it isn’t great to bad mouth your friends, even if they are near fauxtog level.

As for your actual photos, they look good, mostly. You have a couple of posed shots of more than one person where one person is blurry. You have chopped a fair few people in half, like the pic of the three cheerleaders which is guilty of both of the above.  There is the odd white balance problem and lighting could have been better in the sports shots though that is obviously hard to control but other than that there isn’t much to nitpick on. What you need is a better photographer than I am to give you proper critiques and I suspect the best way for you to get that would be to get a job as an assistant to a good photographer. You probably need to narrow down a little what you want to shoot (events, sports, studio?) and work from there. One thing though is that there isn’t a lot of creativity in the shots. They are sound but they are more of a documenting type (which is fine) but it depends on where you want to go from there.

It is obvious you have good gear and know how to use it well. Some of those shots I wouldn’t have included because of pure technical problems. I wouldn’t call you a fauxtog even if you started charging people, I however think you’d benefit from being taken on by someone who is skilled and interested in passing on their knowledge. You should probably even consider taking more courses in photography at a higher level.

I am very sorry for the loss of your friend, she sounds like a great person and photographer.