Can I have a critique please?

[Brownie]

“tight little bow of bullshit” made my day…

[ebi]

see, even emf agrees with me….and emf NEVER agrees with me! lol

[ebi]

@brownie, it makes my day to make your day!

[Sassy]

@ebi that fine that you think my photos are mundane and of babies. I am learning and I am happy to take on any CC you wish to give me. I feel that my shots are at a professional level so i am charging, honestly i would prefer not to. I would happily do it for free but i’m fueling my addiction to photography the best way i know how. I focus on babies because i want to become a heartfelt volunteer and I like babies. I dont need to be completely original, there is no law in photography which means you should be completely original. I would like my photos to be as technically correct as possible and it is a fear of mine to be considered a fauxtographer.

 

I would like to point out that i never once said the haze look was a new thing, of course its been around for ages. i did say that currently it was in fashion and just because something is in fashion doesn’t mean its a new thing, yoyos were in fashion a number of years ago doesnt make them new.

 

I would like you to tell me what exactly is wrong with my critique so that i can learn, I gave my positives of the photos and negatives the way i was taught.

 

I do see now the original image has some white vignette, i would never do a white vignette personally but hey at least she didnt go crazy with it like i have seen.  i missed it because for some reason i cant increase that pictures size like the other one, am i the only one having that issue??

 

[milhouse41]

@ebi  chill out dude, you seem very aggressive.  I’m glad I have a life and don’t get so wound up over someone’s photos.  Calm down, life is way to short….  And shouting and swearing is abuse, sad for you if you cant see the difference between a constructive critique and being nasty.

And @sassy I think you gave a constructive critique, it might not be what everyone else would agree with, but it was your point of view and it was said with dignity and class and that is what I think people are looking for on forums.  Not to be ripped apart because they have the courage to ask for critiques.

Peace guys

 

[emf]

see, even emf agrees with me….and emf NEVER agrees with me! lol

Exactly lol! There must be a glitch in the Matrix or something 🙂

[ebi]

@millhouse – i’m perfectly chill. I’m not yelling but your comments are annoying. You may take my response as aggressive, but I promise you, I don’t take anything personally. Shouting and swearing about improper vignettes are not abuse to anything other than improper vignettes, but they deserve to be abused, mocked and yelled at. They are stupid. So are the ppl who use them. No one said the critiques had to be constructive. Although I felt mine was quite constructive. Nastiness wasn’t a factor until you opened your trap.

@Sassy – here is my critique of your critique

The first four are a nice series, they all need to be edited exactly the same so they fit together. 2 are more hazy then the others. the processing fits and my style is warm and bright so i like them.

No they aren’t. A series should have significant differences between each shot that work together well or have elements that tie one to the next. These aren’t a series, they are the same image with tiny variations save for the projector shot that doesn’t work. They go together well b/c they look exactly the same. But half way through the first one and I’m bored.

Image one is good posing but composure is a little boring,

The word is composition. And if your idea of good composition is two people standing in the center of a tight frame with tall grass behind them then yes this is good composition. But it’s not so let’s move on.

You have used fill flash which was a good idea. but they seem a little shiny from it. There is haze on their face so im not sure if focus is crisp on their eyes or on her nail poilish.

No it was not a good idea at all. If it was, then their skin wouldn’t be shiny. Maybe suggest a better way to shoot this than putting a flash on camera. The fill light flattens the image and then to make matters worse she add this weird effect that creates haze not only on the face but over the entire image and then repeats that for the rest of the images.

Image 2 is nicely composed, they are shiny from the fiill flash and that bothers me, they lovely and connected and well posed. i am unsure if the focus is on their eyes again or the nailpolish.

I can’t tell if dudes eyes are open or closed. bad posing. They are shiny but this one doesn’t have the haze that the other ones have. focus seems fine.

Image 4 This is really nice, focus seems good again well exposed. I would have shot it in landscape and taken a few steps back and have them on the side if that makes sense.

Focus seems good b/c it’s overly sharpened. it was the first thing and really only thing i noticed about this shot. It should have been the first thing you noticed as well. nothing more needs to be said about it b/c it sucks just b/c it’s overly sharpened, hazy and bad.

All those 4 images you need to have the subject further away from the foliage and use a shallower DOF.

Why? Not every image has to have shallow DOF. This doesn’t necessarily look bad with it’s current depth of field, it looks bad for sooo many other reasons.

First wedding detail shot of the dress is nice and well composed.

No it’s not. It looks soft and it also looks like she knew it was soft and tried to sharpen it and messed it up. Then she threw a shitty vignette on the image and made it even worse.

Wedding couple 1, its a nice shot, well exposed, nice connection. odd place to take a photo though. i would have taken them some place else personally. not sure of him crouching down like that when there is a seat right behind them. overall back ground a bit to busy.

hmmmm…you say it’s nice then but then you go ahead and tear it apart. Is it really nice or do you just feel that you need to say it’s nice so that you feel you are being nice. I read what you say and I think that you don’t really know what you’re talking about.

But what you didn’t say was that there isn’t really a nice set of complete images here and there is really nothing showing that she’s a good or even remotely competent photographer. But I guess that is mean to say.
Rather than trying to focus on what is good in the photograph, focus more on what is bad. Let her granny tell her how wonderful her photography is.

That’s cool that you don’t care what I think. Judging by your use of a watermark you obviously think very highly of your own work. I don’t find that you are a fauxtographer at all. But if I can offer any advice it’s not to get caught up on the technical stuff. Your focus should be on taking beautiful and original photographs.

[Sassy]

see why couldn’t you tell the OP that? thank you for critiquing my critique (that sounded wierd) that is a much better critique then what i felt you gave her, thank you for pulling me up on the terminology i used, rereading my critique i see those errors, sorry late response after many hours of editing and my brain was quite mushy. It would have been nice for you to do that before saying

Ohh and that shot is nice if you factor in stuff other then what i said, focus seems ok, connection is nice i felt. i dont know.

 

why didnt you go a bit more in depth with the OP? I just think that using capitals to get your point across about white vignette was a bit too extreme, not arguing or anything here just trying to point out that you are quite capable of giving a nice informative critique. The OP was really nice and pleasant in asking for CC so i was trying to do the same, i am a member of a few forums where we tear shreds through each others work when its CC and i can do that but i choose not to. i can also handle CC myself. would you like me to pop some images up and you can go crazy? i take all CC on board and i take it very very seriously.

 

I put a watermark on my images on FB, was it not you who suggested social media which doesnt have EXIF data you should use a watermark. i try to not have it to be too big, and i use it to direct people to my website (which isn’t up atm btw). Also my recent shots on line are paid ones, these shots were put up before they had selected the images from the gallery. My watermark i was hoping would deter them from just taking them off there and blowing them up, i have heard of this happening.

18months ago i was shooting in auto, no focus, no wb, no idea about lighting ect ect. it is the focusing on the technicalities which has got me out of that horrid place. i think knowing the technical side back to front before pushing the boundaries is very important. Also i’m unsure if you have done any newborn portraiture but its damn hard to pose them in many different ways which haven’t been done before.

 

starting to go round in circles! sorry for all this.

[cameraclicker]

@ Sassy:  Actually I said I had changed my mind about watermarks on pages that strip EXIF.  I still don’t think they are much of a deterrent against theft because I can remove most watermarks in a few minutes.  If you want protection, Digimark sells watermarks that are invisible but can be detected by software even if the image is photocopied or put on a T shirt.  I feel the watermark should be large enough to read but small enough and carefully placed to be unobtrusive.  I think I arrived at this epiphany while reading through e-books published by a guy in California.  He says he is a photographer and is publishing a series of e-books directed at the point & shoot crowd.  One of the photos in his book had text referring to a castle and colourful flag.  It was the Canadian flag and the “castle” was the Canadian Parliament building in Ottawa!  The photo turned out to be from a royalty free stock site, as did many other photos.  Best of all, a photo I really liked of a wedding party contained a watermark in the lower right corner.  His books all contain a page that goes on about his copyright, not reproducing it, not even giving it away or sharing it!  I traced the wedding party photo back to the original photographer who had not given anyone permission to use it and was not aware it was in the book.  I’m also a fan of the image search tools.

I looked through your Facebook page.  I’m not a huge fan of baby photos.  Some I liked, some I felt neutral about, “The cutest garden gnome you will ever see” ( https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=453332791412432&set=a.451879238224454.1073741825.272109452868101&type=1&theater ) caught my eye because every time I see the thumbnail I am drawn to the right cheek and mouth which looks like the photo splintered.  I hope the photo doesn’t do the little one justice.

[ebi]

i’m just not a fan of baby photos in general. Plus there is more than just baby work, unless your anne geddes. She kind of killed that genre for me anyways. Now everyone wants photos of babies just like her. I’m hard pressed to find examples of anything that I like that doesn’t look like her stuff. However, if you are passionate about it, by all means. I realize it’s incredibly difficult. I’ve worked on shoots with newborns and kids of all ages. They are not easy. I’ve had very little interest in fashion but if I did, I think I’d want to do kids fashion. I really love the work in this magazine: http://www.milkmagazine.net/

As for watermarks, I hate them. They don’t belong on my photos. In fact, I would prefer that no text were on my photos, but I realize that this just isn’t possible. Most often, the text is badly placed. If you want your watermark to be an ad, then you should just make an ad. I don’t think that low rez images need to be protected on the internet. They are worthless. The quality is worthless. Every once in a while I search a bunch of my images and every once in a while I find someone using it in a manner that i’m not happy with. Most people link back to my site, which is great. That is the very least someone can do. But when people blatantly rip off my images for their own use, I simply send them an email, tell them they had no permission to use it, and ask them to take it down. Usually they comply. If they don’t, I find their phone number and nag them about it. That works. The internet isn’t very confrontational, ppl can hide behind it. You can make it far more personal. But honestly, your images being out there on the internet, with a link back to you, is really all you need. And so rather than fighting the copyright fight, I find it’s just easier to set some very basic and agreeable rules. #1, you may not put text over my images, #2, you must link back to me or credit me #3, you may not make money off my photo.

Sometimes companies use my images without asking and do a bad crop job. I send them an email saying, next time please ask, and if you need a tighter cropped version, please let me know and I’ll supply it to you. Often times its the result of interns not knowing any better. That happens and is excusable. Sometimes you just simply have no control over the images, but these are situations where you’ve been paid money for the images so you have no say. I have two books coming out this fall and I’m starting to see the images out there already and there are really bad crop jobs, they aren’t using the right resolution images so they look pixelated. Huffington Post picked up some of the images for a story on the book and they just look so bad. I tried to contact somewhere there but it was impossible. Instead I contacted the books publicist and said, these look horrible we have to do something about it. And she did.

I didn’t go in depth with the OP because I don’t believe that a critique should be so in depth. I think you should point out a few things that are wrong with the image and then let them figure out the rest. Often I think it’s enough to say that the photo is bad (doesn’t work) and let them figure out why. You never learn anything if someone is always telling you why your images suck. You have to work that out for yourself. It’s called problem solving. But in my original post to the OP, I felt that I went sufficiently in depth on what needed to be said. In college, I actually stopped going to assignment critiques because i felt like I was given too much information. Especially too much positive critique. I finally had to say, will you please stop blowing smoke up my ass. I want to know whats wrong with it. b/c i really hated the images i shot in college. They were horrid. My instructor started critiquing my work on paper and I would show up after class was over to get the assignment back. He wasn’t happy that I wasn’t coming to critique but realized that everyone has their own process. I think he would have been more disapproving if I wasn’t coming b/c the critiques were too negative. I do regret my decision to not return though. I think part of the process i missed out on was learning to read between the lines of what people are saying. Your comment about first liking the image and then basically criticizing the entire thing from top to bottom is very common in the real world. Another common answer to “Is it good?” is “I don’t know, what do you think?” Infuriating.

I used all caps b/c i wanted to convey the point that I was yelling at that moment. White vignettes are bad. They show a complete lack of understanding of film, lenses and why they vignette. I realize that we are past the point of film except for novelty and stalwart magazines that are shooting themselves in the foot with their growing film budgets and I realize that my generation is probably going to be the last to ever see the inside of a darkroom. I see nothing wrong with that; the medium is evolving. But in a lot of ways it’s devolving when anyone with a $500 DSLR thinks they can take a photo and try to make it look like film. It’s important to note that vignetting, while sometimes desired, shows a defect of the lens. It was never intended in the first place but b/c lenses are built with rear elements being smaller than front elements, the front elements cut the intensity of the light on the outer edges of the frame. In digital photography, software was created to correct this issue, adding a crude amount of brightness the area that vignettes. The process is not exact(although when using lens profiles in lightroom or capture one, they are pretty accurate) and overuse results in a really bad effect. At some point, someone thought that was a good idea. It was not. It was intended to be used very subtly to reduce vignette; not create an entirely new kind of vignette.

[Aevey]

To the people who have edited my images, I  have not given permission for them to be altered and posted on the web. I am concerned that people believe they have a right to do this without asking permission from the author. As the legal copyright owner of this work, I am asking you to delete them from the web and from your machines. Thank you.

There are a a couple of critiques given that I want to say thanks to and I will be in contact with the writers outside of this thread…

 

 

[cameraclicker]

Aevey, please explain what you think copyright does for you.

Since you have apparently seen the edited versions, I am happy to delete the version I created since it was done for you and I am happy to recover the space.  You should be aware that everyone who has viewed a photo you posted has downloaded that photo and stored it on their PC for some period of time which varies from a few minutes to forever depending on the version of their software and settings.

[ebi]

I uploaded mine on imgur. It’s there forever. Unless you want to request deletion. Feel free. I hope that part of your photography degree will teach you about what copyright means.

[Aevey]

 

I’ve read the imgur  terms of service and regarding copyright it says under the heading of “Stuff not to do”,

“if someone else might own the copyright to it, don’t upload it.” http://imgur.com/tos

 

There’s more about copyright further down under the “Details” heading.
“Intellectual Property
By uploading a file or other content or by making a comment, you represent and warrant to us that (1) doing so does not violate or infringe anyone else’s rights; and (2) you created the file or other content you are uploading, or otherwise have sufficient intellectual property rights to upload the material consistent with these terms.”

 

[Brownie]

Here’s the thing though, I’m not really keen on the laws about this, but my understanding is that once an image is edited, it is a new piece with an entirely different protection. I could take any photograph off of the internet, make alterations, and the altered version is essentially mine, that’s my limited understanding of the law.

 

[Author]

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