Reply To: Hoping I'm not a Fauxtog!!

[fstopper89]

The frustrating thing is, I never once said “I’m better than you” to anyone I was giving advice to. And I never said my photos that I used as examples are “the” way to do it. They were merely examples, in one case, explaining how there are different ways to fill the frame of a photo or leave background and negative space. Like I had said even in that post, some of those photos probably could have worked with more or less negative space than I had chosen to use.

I had said some of Ajay’s images were mediocre because I didn’t see anything in a few of them that made them stand out as spectacular. Two of the images (the one with the boardwalk on the left, and the one that appeared to be a beach sandstorm) to me are far more interesting. One photo, of people walking on the beach, I didn’t care for. I didn’t like the sharpening it appeared to have, and would have liked to see them silhouetted instead of some colors of their clothing showing. The sign on the right side pulled my attention away from the people, which created a slight confusion as to what the intended subject was.

The reason I brought up portraits is because most of what this site is about and what a lot of the critiques going on amidst these forums, is for portraits. I’m well aware there are nature, landscape, wildlife, ocean, etc. photographers who have no interest in doing portraits and in no way does that make them not as good as any portrait photographers. I think some people are reading between the lines WAY too much here. I give advice, and someone comes at me and says I’m in no position to give advice because my photos suck? Ignorant broad generalizations like that are meant to anger someone and belittle them. I’m very aware my photos don’t “suck.” Have I ever shot a crappy image? Of course, so have all of us.

Whether you want to admit it or not, formal education in any subject will give someone an advantage. If you are a photographer and have not had any formal education, that in no way means you’re not as good or better than someone who has. I’m assuming you’ve done your own study, read lots of books, and had a lot of practice, to get to be a good photographer. It’s not like it’s the medical field, where you could open up your own practice just after reading a bunch of books and practicing on fetal pigs. LOL. Again, I never insinuated you need training to be good at something. But if you went at it with no idea about photography at all, it sure would take a heck of a lot of practice and trial-and-error to figure out what you’re doing, coincidentally, also a lot more time. The tools are available to anyone.