Any Critique

[andimarie]

I, like many before me, am wanting some outside advice about my website and work. I want your honest opinion, don’t be afraid! I feel I will get better feedback here than with my friends and family because they’re too nice!

I actually haven’t given this website out to anyone yet, I’m just getting started. 🙂

http://www.andimariephotography.com

[Worst Case Scenario]

You have some nice shots, but there are a lot of blown out high lights and you web page design is not doing you any favours.

I’m browsing on a 22″ monitor and everything is TOO BIG. None of you pics are sharp enough to be displayed at this size. Also the right scrolling design will confuse a lot of people and anyone using a mac (like me) will keep bringing up the dock when they try to scroll.

The home page image is over exposed on the girls skin and she looks very yellow. I’d clone in some more flowers to hide the bare earth patches as well. However, given that it fills the screen, I’m not sure it’s a good idea to have such a bright / yellow image as a home page.

If you are going to use pics of you on the about page, you should at least be able to see your face in them.

A lot of your pics are good, just not good enough to be taking up so much of my monitor.

Hope that doesn’t sound too harsh.

[cameraclicker]

The page loads slowly, several seconds to get Portraits on a 30 MB/sec service is extremely slow, I am not used to waiting.

The girl on the home page does seem to have a case of yellow skin.

Your web page controls are not very intuitive.  It showed the first image, #0, I guess, with a border at the right and a little of some other photo.  On mouse-over, you get a hand, and clicking takes you to the same image but another click gets you the next image.  It would be cleaner to go to a thumbs page, or directly to the individual photo.  I still have not figured out how to back up a photo or two.  When I got out of the individual view, I found the slider at the bottom of my window, buried under the URL for the image.

#8 , is one of the better treatments of a subject behind a foreground blind of some sort.

#12, needs fill flash.

#13, is keystoned.  Why the pose?  Why the outfit?

It looped around so I’m back at the first one.  #0 is keystoned, too.  That is more remarkable than the model, so the shot was not successful.

#1, needs more sharpness, perhaps needs to be closer to the model, needs the shadow removed/reduced through fill flash.

#2, is probably my favourite of the group, followed by #8 and #4.

So, I chose Studio, and the controls are totally different!  Some consistency would be nice.  Low marks for the studio shots.  I don’t get the beautiful luminous light feeling from any of those photos.

1/9 has yellow skin and a dirty floor/wall/seamless.

Is 2/9 done with a wind machine or is she turning her head?  Either way, her head is turned to that awkward place where the tip of her nose is disturbing the line of her right cheek.  Less turn or more turn, but not that much.  The light she is facing is too bright.

6/9 has a hot spot on his forehead and another on his nose.  My eye goes to his nose and lips instead of his eyes.

7/9 looks like you may have been trying out clam-shell lighting with a low softbox?  The light is too bright below, and too flat.

9/9 is too bright on the right side of her face.

 

In Weddings, 9/13 looks a bit high ISO grainy, but the sky is nice and you can see them, so marks for that.  The image feels like it should be rotated a bit clockwise, quite a bit!

“The Ultimate – $1,100
Includes unlimited coverage and
a CD with all the images desired
with a copyright release. 2 16×20
photos chosen by the client. Also a
free engagement or portrait
session.”

What if the images I desire are ones you didn’t take?  Just curious.

Why did you choose the soft focus, low contrast photo of the chick with purple hair to adorn your pricing page?

 

[Bill]

There were several pics that I thought were nicely composed but have some post issues.  Without knowing your workflow, it appears to have the look like you adjusted the contrast and clarity sliders up too far for the image.

I would 2nd what WCS stated about the girl on the home page, the flowers are throwing a yellow color-cast on her.  Proper post can alleviate that.  Also, yes your about page, no good.  Again crooked photos and way too small for an about page.  It says that your impersonal and distant, remember you have to communicate through your photos, not hide behind them.

As for your others, the photos seem nice but I have several issues that you should have seen right off the bat.  Most of you photos are crooked, your wedding photo couple is on a hill with a dramatic sunset and the horizon is way crooked, then in another photo, almost straight.  You need to concentrate on your consistency.

Most of your photos have, in my opinion, way too much DOF for the pose.  They appear to be mostly cropped in photos, probably the reason they are not sharp and your color management is way out of control, too many blown highlights and erratic skin tones.

 

Don’t get me wrong, you look like you have some great ideas, but need some refining.  Keep shooting, I would like to see you get better.

[andimarie]

Thank you guys for your feedback! This is exactly what I needed 🙂

I was not aware the website photos were too big. I designed this on a PC and it looked perfectly balanced on the page to me, but I recently got a mac book and will have to take a look to re-do some design issues you brought up. Also the controls on every page are the same for me, have no clue why they would be different. But again I will look into that.

Thank you guys so much for the critique! I will be working on those issues as soon as possible! I also have some second shoots lined up with a photographer so I will gather more images to replace the ones you guys don’t think are so strong.

Thanks again for your time!

Andi

 

 

[andimarie]

Bill

Thank you! I do enjoy a sort of brighter photo which is probably why the color seems weird. But I will work on color correcting while brightening.

I am currently on the hunt for new about me photos. You are right, I don’t want to seem distant! And the crooked thing I’ve stated to notice and am trying to get it under control. I’m noticing when I’m taking the picture now, so it is easier to fix, but when trying to straighten the horizon  photo, I felt like I was cropping too much.

The DOF is also something I’m working on by getting a better lens. I love shallow depth of fields, but found it difficult to capture with my  5.6 lens.

 

Thank you for your feedback!!

Andi 🙂

[Bill]

No problem.

Remember, DOF is not only controlled by the aperture size, but also the distance between you and the subject. SO the further away you are from your focal point (this is where you subject should be, like a model’s eyes) the DOF starts about there.  Technically, a little before the focal point and some distance  beyond.

It differs from lens to lens, but this may help Online DOF Calculator

 

Hope that helps somewhat.

[Author]

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