Excuses

[Sarah]

Have you ever caught a photographer for an excuse for everything when trying to give helpful tips on making a image better? Or have you even given a excuse yourself? Example that I ran into today: Photo of a cake with details on the front that are blending in because its white  on white. I suggest lighting it diffrently and they say they did not have anyone to hold a light. I suggest trying to fix it in RAW because the whites were not completely blown out and also suggest masking. These are quick and easy fixes. And they say they do not want to fix anything in post. So they are telling me that they would rather hand over a bad photo than try to fix it. I suggested that next time they dont have a helper at  a wedding that they bring a tripod or light stand (no excuses on that so far). Anyway its frustrating. Share your storys.

[dont.care]

Their reputation; people fail to think objectively.. it’s always good to consider–if it’s something good enough to have for yourself, then by all means; if not, you shouldn’t expect anyone else to want it, or expect to have to accept it.. ;\

if one ever has any doubt about the quality of their work–whether by piece or complete set; they ought not be using it professionally.

People that assume they are beyond lecture or criticism–are doomed to fail by their own vices..

[fstopper89]

A fauxtog had a wedding album on her page (God forbid they actually paid her for those photos… EVERY photo was terribly blurry, had splotchy color noise, and every image was dark, yeah, it was the worst wedding photography I’ve seen in my life) and right in the caption it stated “Sorry for all the blurry photos. In need of a better camera.”

[IHF]

The worst excuse… This wasn’t a paid shoot and/or it was just practice.  What were you practicing exactly?  Maybe I can overlook everything that is wrong, and try to see through it, if you could tell me what you were working on.  Practice shoots, are so you can have full creative control.  Take your time setting up, working on posing, lighting, settings, new techniques, or learning new equipment, or learning how to use new backdrops or props  etc.  They are for YOU.  To me that means I’m going to see your very best.  What turns you on, and drives you, not sloppy pointing and clicking, or shots that completely resemble all your other shots in your portfolio.  They should be different because you are practicing something new.  they should be better, because you are implementing something you have learned.  Unless of course you are just practicing how to use a memory card, and downloading and uploading files.  In that case you have it down.  In my head when this excuse pops up, I think… if you have to make up an excuse for this, this one actually makes you look really really bad.  Wouldn’t it be better to say something like, “My client sprung this on me last minute and needed the images in a hurry.  I had no control over the situation at all.   I ended up giving the images to her free of charge, because I wasn’t very happy with them myself”. That would make more sense to me, even if it were made up, and not a very good excuse either.  At least I wouldn’t lose respect for you.

but yeah, that one really gets my goat.

One that makes me laugh “it’s what the clients asked for”.  Especially when it’s not technically sound, and not about the editing at all.  “Oh your client wanted to be underexposed, and have a tree growing out of their head.  Oh I see now” or “oh they wanted to be positioned that way so they look really large, and look as though they don’t have a neck”.  It’s pretty rare to have any client in THAT much control anyway.  Don’t most people trust their photographer to make decisions like that?  LOL  I question the editing as well.  I mean I highly doubt anyone wants to look like they have some sort of liver disease, or wants their children to look like starving vampires, and actually requests this before the shutter is even clicked.  But I laugh more when it’s not editing in question, because really???  How lame are you?

[cameraclicker]

Well… My practice photos seldom make it to the Internet.  This is what my practising today looked like:

Hardly inspiring, but the coffee cans seem never to get bored.  The background is white seamless, so why is it blue?  Lights were softboxes on the cans with continuous fluorescent daylight balanced bulbs and a 600 EX RT flash with the CTO gel that came with it.  The gel is automatically changing the camera’s view of white balance and it is compensating for the orange but since most of the light is daylight, things are suddenly blue.  There may be an opportunity to get an extra blue sky, here somewhere.  I will have to mess with it a bit more.  This is a departure from my 580 EX II with a CTO gel that affected colour but did not talk to the camera!

What the effect is for is starting with incandescent light like this

… and when you add flash with gel, it automatically becomes this

Anyway, I was just practising.  That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Once I have figured out how to pretty up the coffee cans, I might shoot it again and turn it into part of a note on using flash.  Or not, we’ll see.

[IHF]

lol  camera clicker, your practice shots look about as exciting as mine lol

only mine involve a vacuum usually 😉  Ive never messed with gels, but now you’ve made me more interested in it.  But yeah, I mean when a “pro” posts a pic or session or port for critique and it’s a portrait session/sessions, just kinda haphazardly put together and snapped.  Then they get some negative feed back and come back to say “It was just practice”.  hummmmm… well then why does it look just like all the other PAID shoots you do?  but I’m sure you know what I meant by it.

[dstone81]

Yeah my practice shots are just that practice shots, because I want to learn and most of those shots are of mundane things. Like these are a couple of practice shots from the other day where I had read up on DOF and manual focus and I wanted to try and apply what I learned and these were the results.

I just look at the photogs usually when they say oh it was just for practice like “uh huh…Well then all your shots must be just practice then.”

 

[cameraclicker]

I was thinking about the “practice” excuse at dinner the other night, and so I had to get out a “camera” and practice.  This is what I got

Yep, young pigeon on a plate!  Taken with the extremely expensive 4 mm lens in my cell phone.

OK, so, seriously… It occurs to me that lawyers, doctors and accountants that are in business all call what they do “a practice”.  Lawyers practice law, doctors practice medicine, and so on.  On that basis, photographers practice photography, always.  What every you shot this morning, yesterday, last week, etc., was hopefully a learning experience at some level.  Something didn’t turn out as well as you would have liked, because… Or, the pictures really came out exactly as hoped, setting the flash that way is just killer…

No one ever accepts the doctor was just practicing when the patient dies and malpractice suits start!

 

Reading what Sarah was saying about people not wanting to fix anything in post is interesting too.  There seems to be a misconception that photographers used to get it right in the camera, and that was it.  While that might be true when shooting slides, most photographers shooting print film had the opportunity to make changes during the printing process and even pure news publications allow brighten, darken, change contrast, and have someone in-house to do that for the photographer in the field before going to print.

 

The only time you really see straight out of camera, guaranteed, is a slide show using original transparencies.  There are even ways to make new slides, if you are determined enough.  Digital has evened the playing field, you can do all the things in Photoshop or your favorite editor that used to take a lot of trial and error doing prints in a darkroom, but it is still the same and many of the tools have the same name as when it was done in a darkroom.    This was uploaded a year ago, so perhaps you have all seen it already, if not it is an enjoyable way to spend a couple of minutes:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_vVUIYOmJM

[fstopper89]

Remember too, there were almost always flaws in photographs taken decades ago before they had certain technologies to fix things after shooting. I’m sure there have been a few perfect photographs, but today’s “purists” who think their photos are always perfect right out of the camera and snob at those who use Photoshop should keep in mind industry standards. 50 years ago industry standards probably didn’t require every photograph to be free of grain, occasional dust specks, maybe less-than-perfect exposure, etc. Today, if you look at the work of top photographers, you’ll see that much of their work can be considered (by most viewers) as perfection. If an image was slightly underexposed, or the person had acne, or the wb was a little off, those are things that are so easily fixed in editing. Most consumers won’t book a photo session with someone who’s a purist and says they won’t edit their photos at all.

The way technology is today makes it easier to take shortcuts to a better photograph than what was available several decades ago.

[dstone81]

I get what you guys are saying. 🙂

[Author]

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