Reply To: Just for Fun

[Nightrose]

The good: Your portraits overall are quite good, and I particularly like the first black and white shot of Sarah holding the 2013 sign – nicely composed with interesting bokeh in the background. I also really like the girl holding the mask to her face in Wall Photos. You also seem to have quite a flair for action/movement shots – the muddy water splashing, the dancers and the kids playing.

The not so good: There are quite a few photos in your albums which look out of focus (unless it is Facebook which has destroyed them). For portraits it is better to use a single focal point, and aside from a few exceptions, the eyes should pretty much always be in focus.  Your wedding album is, in my opinion, the weakest, because there are a lot of pics which don’t have great focus or look grainy/oversharpened. Wedding photography is super challenging as everything happens so quickly, and you have one chance to get it right, with no do-overs. It isn’t something to be taken lightly and not everyone is cut out to be a wedding photographer (which isn’t to say you can’t try!).

A few pieces of advice:  The colours in your photos are nice and vibrant, but do keep an eye on the saturation levels as they are on the borderline of being too much. If you can and haven’t already done so, get your monitor calibrated – you can buy calibrators that are relatively cheap and do a good job. Spyder4 Express is $120.  Also, and this isn’t always easy to do: be ruthless in what you show in your public albums; only display your very best work, even if you have to cull the majority of what you’ve done. Quality over quantity in this case 🙂 I’d rather see an album with 5 amazing photos than one with 20 so-so ones mixed in.

Overall I think you’re doing really well and I’d recommend that you focus on portraiture and action shots as these look to be your areas of strength. Photograph what you love, and you will get better and better with time 🙂