Reply To: Will someone please go tell this woman she is a fauxtog?

[fstopper89]

Yes thank you creyeyes. When I use the actions, I make tons of adjustments and usually to several layers of each action, some actions I only set at 12% opacity and use multiple actions. I’ve always been a very detail-oriented person so if I see fit I tend to tweak my edits quite a bit until it feels perfect to me. I know this tends to make me slower at editing (and I procrastinate a lot, unless I have set deadlines!) I am really working on getting better and better SOOC shots so that I don’t have to do much editing. Some of my more recent work I was quite happy with the SOOC, and only did a little editing to give it that extra oomph. I don’t think I’ll ever have a perfect SOOC. Some photographers do, especially I think older photographers who’ve been in the business since film days, since you had to rely on getting the shot right in the first place MUCH more (besides using some filters and dodging/burning in the darkroom- yes I’ve had minimal experience in darkrooms before while in college). I highly commend those photographers. Most of us would not have survived in a business sense in the film days, at least not without several years of practice. Digital cameras and software HAVE truly made it easier for “anyone” to be a photographer but there’s such a spectrum of what you can call good photography because of this. In the old days it was either good or terrible, IMO. I have a few great older books on photography that were all down to the basics such as getting exposure right on black and white film. I’ve read some here and there, and it does help. I would suggest any photographer read some old books and really get down to the basics. When I think back on my first photography courses in college and realize how shitty of work I put out, I am also happy I had that experience. At the time I thought “oh, I totally get this… but wait, I forget, when you have a lower f-stop are you supposed to speed up the shutter or slow it down? Wait, let me refer to my notes again…” LOL, seriously, I thought that. I didn’t know the technical aspects of photography at all, all I knew is that I loved taking pictures and I thought I had a good eye for things.

This photograph was my “pride and joy” of my first photography course. It was I think, supposed to be a portrait showing emotion without showing someone’s face. We had to wind and develop the film itself, then dry it, then take it in the darkroom and make prints and develop them in the chemical baths. Out of all my final images for this course this was by far my best- sharpest, best contrast, best texture, most emotion. The original print I made in the darkroom had some dust specks and was a bit lower in contrast, this is the high-resolution scan/slightly photoshopped version. I entered this photo in the fair and received a merit award on it. > http://www.flickr.com/photos/roxanne_elise_photography/6796932042/in/set-72157628691483073

I want to try to justify tilt. Yes now I see I probably use it too much, but I do think it looks artful/tasteful in this situation: Let’s say you have a person doing a subtle chin tilt in a photo. If you tilt the entire image the opposite direction so their eyes are now on a straight plane (not so far where the image is tilted more than about 25 degrees-ish) would that look more pleasing? I think so, in some cases at least. I’ve seen people do complete 45 degree tilts in situations where I don’t see it’s warranted, and those make me want to turn my head sideways. I’m sure I’ve done that before. I’ll have to scour through my porftolio, I’m sure I could find some bad examples. Another situation (this was mentioned by another poster here) is that when you have an object where you want to get the tip of a sailboat and there would be too much negative space if you photographed it straight-on, giving it some tilt minimizes the negative space and fills the frame better.

Here’s an example of keeping the eyes on a straight plane, while tilting the background. Does it work for this image? http://www.flickr.com/photos/roxanne_elise_photography/7634074040/in/set-72157628691483073

Another of tilting to keep the female’s eyes on the straight plane. This one’s probably a little too tilted, but I didn’t want the door of the fire truck to be vertical. http://www.flickr.com/photos/roxanne_elise_photography/8220486458/in/photostream

Here’s an example of filling the frame and eliminating negative space by tilting. (This is admittedly a horrible photo, I was hiking through the woods so I took my lens that is NOT a good portrait lens as it’s never sharp, I wanted to get his expression and hands in the frame while still being very close up) > http://www.flickr.com/photos/roxanne_elise_photography/8220486458/in/photostream

Another of filling the frame by tilting.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/roxanne_elise_photography/7990811322/in/photostream

Please give feedback if this use of tilting is good. I promise I’m going to think more now when I use tilt!