Reply To: I'd love some critique~

[Jones]

I am by no means a master of anything, and I’m still in high school myself… but I seem to have the opposite problem you do with portraits — got the technical side down, struggle with other things. For what it’s worth, I’d definitely say you have the better problem to fix, because people seem to be comfortable around you, etc. etc.

There aren’t a whole lot of portraits to go on, though I’d love to see some more, but the girl lying in the flowers is certainly my favorite. The only thing I wish is that the flowers and entirety of her face were all completely sharp… Maybe her face could be a tad bit warmer for the overall feel of the image, but that’s just me splitting hairs.

I like the one of the girl in front of the mountains, like she’s getting ready to go on a journey. I wish she were lighter, but that would be pretty hard to accomplish unless you had someone near her with a reflector, an off-camera flash, or you’re just throwing an on-camera flash a ridiculous amount for fill. I like the backlight on her, though. Splitting hairs again, I wish we could see what the image would have looked like if she were more to the left and then higher or lower. It seems too close to the middle horizontally now… now that it’s wrong, just that I’d like to see what it would have looked like differently.

The wedding shot is excellent, and weddings are the one thing I refuse to even look at so nicely done. There is some distracting CA on the edges of her dress, but I don’t know if you tried to do anything with that in post. It’d be worth a shot, if anything. My mentor, who was a 35-year veteran wedding photographer, would have been able to tell you a lot more things and what to do… she might have suggested a little fill on the face. That’s tough to get on the fly (for me, at least) though. Same thing with the kid and the baseball… wish he were a bit brighter, but that’s after the fact and not a ton you could do on it at the time (maybe try moving spots or something). But it is an emotional picture.

The man in the jacket is a nice expression, but for some reason feels a little teeny “snapshotty” and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s a little tiny blurry? Or too much noise?
Unclebob pretty much said it all… It can be tough trying to constantly meter on the fly, but especially if you are shooting one person in similar locations you should be able to get it down and keep it relatively in check throughout the shoot. Sears is out of business now, so don’t worry about them. 😛

Keep it up… enjoy your work.