Reply To: Something to past the time (most recent shoot)

[theleestudio]

Dear ArizonaGuy,

Once again, thanks for your EXCELLENT feedback. I don’t take ANY of this as a tearing down. I’ve been a member of campus life for three years as an RA, so believe me, I get a lot of stuff thrown at me (sometimes quite literally).

The visual aids help a lot. I think I’m more of a visual personal myself, honestly  Going back to the drawing board. I’ve been frustrated with my lack of knowledge of posing as well, and have been reading some texts on it. Do you have any examples of interesting poses?

1. Level. This is a big issue for me that I’ve noticed. I like to shoot hand held, but I’m usually unable to keep my hands perfectly still. What is this guide bar you speak of? Just a straight horizontal line as reference?

2. Lighting issue has been thrown at me a couple of times. I’m hoping to invest in a flash soonish, and some reflectors. I’m shooting in Manual mode already, and I think for that shoot, I had my camera set on spot metering. I’m probably going to take the album down and do a lot of re editing. Brightness should be on her face you say?

Would the brightness in train track 2 be ideal? (and >_< I just noticed that. I was editing late night it just flew right by me.)

3. The negative space was a lot of time due to the fact that I wanted the subject to lie along at least one of the 3 lines vertical lines of the crop, and for her eyes to hit on that intersecting point. I tried not to cut off body parts as you said for the most part. Should I go for a more confined crop? I’m still on the look out for more interesting locations (being on campus is kind of dull, but with no car, that’s what you get).

4. Out of focus softness/blur. I’m curious about that one myself, because in the display window, I nail the focus with the AF points. Like, no question. But it comes out soft. For the most part I’m not shooting wide open and I got my lens calibrated to my body (it was a -3 MA) but then again, it could be my technique. This shoot was exclusively on the 50mm 1.2 L, and it is reputed to have some back focus issues, though for the most part, after the calibration its been pretty spot on.

5. Addressed above. Totally agree @.@

6.  Yes, must stress, none of these shoots have been charged.  Just the one with the family, which was more of an incidental occurrence, (faculty member asked me to shoot their family, told him I wasn’t a pro, they said they liked my photos and didn’t mind). None of these other shoots were for cash, but rather for the sake of practicing and providing profile pics for people. As you said, I am aware I am not ready (hence why I’m posting here for advice :D) I’m also currently enrolled in an online portrait photog class (it was a groupon, I figured what the hell. I also got a groupon from this other photographer, http://www.majoliephotography.com/.

I was going to observe what she does and see if I could learn anything (again a visual learner.) Would she be classified as a faux-tog?

Thanks so much again! With winter break rolling around, I should have a ton of time to study photography and shoot a lot.