Home › Forums › Am I a Fauxtog? › Is this popular 'photographer' a faux? › Reply To: Is this popular 'photographer' a faux?
FauxFightersI would say that hellkitten may be overreaching a bit calling Jess a full on “faux”. With that said, she still needs to work on some stuff. Here is my critique of her web and FB page.
First it looks like Jess is a young MWAC. Per her About section on J.Mc Photography, she is 24 and has no formal training, but photography is her “passion”. Strike against her, but not a huge thing if your shooting is good. A degree on the wall is just paper if you can’t shoot worth a damn, but it does lend some credibility. If I was her I would take that “no formal training” stuff off though. Just screams MWAC. Or maybe take a class or two so you can say you have some honest to God education on the subject. But enough of this, lets look at some photos.
I’ll begin with the Portrait Shoots – Studio album
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.523046511076047.1073741832.250486584998709&type=3
To begin, her lighting is usually not bad. I don’t see any glaring problems many fauxtogs have where its painfully obvious they are using super weak lights, if not just the pop-up. Shadows are almost nonexistent. Focus is usually sharp (couple are a touch soft but not unusable) and she only did one faux shot with selective coloring. My only complaints would be like this:
She did not bother to remove the white spot right on the subjects shoulder. Really draws my eye in that shot as its really obvious.
This one highlights what I think is her other weakness where her lack of training shows. She sometimes has the model and awkward poses, like the lady in that picture with her right arm.
This one, same thing. Her arm is really straight with just a slight bend.
This one she has her arm bent, but then the subjects face just does not look happy. Also I would have had her drop the left shoulder a bit more and done something better with the left hand. Again, the photo isn’t bad, but I think a model posing class or book would help a lot to make these shots really pop.
As to her outdoor shooting, I would say that it isn’t bad. She is smart enough to not do the usual fauxtographer tricks like having bright splotches of sunlight on the subject, or a semi-blown out background. She does occasional go super-dutch on the angles when I don’t think it is necessary, like:
If I had to pick her worst thing though it would probably be her white balance issues. She posts a lot in B&W so you can’t see it, and I think some of that is because she can’t balance consistently.
And she does have some shots where the focus is not great. Here are a few:
Overall I still would not call her a fauxtog and she doesn’t have anything that deserves to be on this page. However I think she has a long way to go, and must be using some sort of like buying or like ladder to get that many likes. I know multiple pros that having being shooting professionally as their sole income source for years and they have been 500-2000 likes. She should do some training and maybe collaborate with some other local photographers to expand her knowledge and skillset. But she isn’t bad.