Fauxtogs who should end up on the main page…

[JanJan]

So I did my first bride and groom photo session. They did a low-key, tiny wedding at a chapel in Vegas. I wouldn’t necessarily call this an elopement because it looked like it was planned and her parents and some family and friends were present.

At first I was going to turn them down, being that I’m terrified of shooting weddings at my level of experience (been only shooting people for less than a year, and landscape since 2006), but I decided to accept because I realized that many chapels in Vegas do not allow 3rd party photographers during the ceremony. So the pictures I took of the bride and groom were after the ceremony, but before dinner. This was much more manageable for me.

I recently stumbled upon their chapel’s photography portfolio and they look awful, but their customers are forced to buy them because they are part of a package deal.

Here is the chapel’s photography portfolio:
http://weekirk.com/Professional_Photography.cfm

Selective coloring, they must love:
http://weekirk.com/images/gallery_photos/24.jpg
http://weekirk.com/images/gallery_photos/2.jpg

Of course they love vignetting:
http://weekirk.com/images/gallery_photos/8.jpg

The bride posted her proofs and one of them had major vignetting, like the one above.

Here’s one of the shots I took of the bride. I’m still in the process of doing editing the rest. I was nervous about not doing a good job, being that they were my first bride and groom, but if the bride seems excited about the bad proofs she received from the chapel, I’m sure she’ll love mine. I showed her this picture and she loved it!
http://anjanette365project.tumblr.com/image/50012238231

[cameraclicker]

Good skin tone, the dress looks white, there’s detail in the dress, flowers and hair.  The background replacement went well, at the size shown, masking looks excellent.  She looks great.  Not a surprise she loved it.  Good work.

[dont.care]

Here is the chapel’s photography portfolio:

http://weekirk.com/Professional_Photography.cfm

Selective coloring, they must love:

http://weekirk.com/images/gallery_photos/24.jpg

http://weekirk.com/images/gallery_photos/2.jpg

Of course they love vignetting:

http://weekirk.com/images/gallery_photos/8.jpg

it amazes me that people use selective coloring to “draw attention”.. I find it nicer to “brighten” the subject or “darken” everything else slightly. .. Sure as hell beats select coloring

[iliketag]

Alarnold, that’s exactly the reason I’m over weddings. I shot this last one for a friend and it was so stressful for me. It was a phenomenal opportunity (and she was very happy with the shots) but until I am ready and can find a second shooter I trust, I just don’t want to run the risk. It still takes me a fair amount of time to construct the shot so I am honestly not there.
I loved your shot there though, it’s very flattering too!

Is it really bad of me that when I think “Vegas Wedding” I think of really cheesy, really poor photography? I know they aren’t all like that, but it’s just what automatically comes to mind. I’m sure that must be hell for the quality photographers out there! Looking at those shots, like the Valley of Fire one… it’s a good shot. I liked it in the thumbnail… and then I blew it up. The editing job killed it 🙁 I wonder if maybe it was one they really liked but it was out of focus (the highlights were pretty blown but it wasn’t too awful) or something and they edited the crap out of it to mask it. It’s heartbreaking to toss out a shot you thought you had, I’ve had to do it with shots of my friend’s daughter a few times where I was working with too shallow a DOF with a toddler… but you can’t show that as your quality work. That has no place in a portfolio. If mom wants it to run a 3×5 at costco, I’ll give it to her (hey, she’s my friend), but it’s not going to be the beautiful 8×10 you hoped for.

[iliketag]

I should share a photo I did when I was in high school, learning on a digital point and shoot. I was guilty of the selective coloring in this one. It was my little brother coloring with chalk on our front porch and he just looked so content. In the hayday of myspace, of COURSE everything had to be black and white except his chalk art! I was pretty proud of it at the time and it’s at least not my worst moment, but oh yes… I’ve done it too! Lol.

For high end photography, I think it cheapens it so severely! I saw a photo on Pinterest a while back that was a bunch of black umbrellas and the bride and groom lifting away a colored one. There is a version of it that I loved. It wasn’t selective color, they just removed the colored element by having everyone else covered completely by the top of their umbrella against a concrete floor. You could tell it was a natural pop. Every copy cat of the image I’ve seen has been selective color and it just looks… wrong.
Why do people want that for portraits? Is it still that popular?

[JanJan]

@Cameraclicker….Thanks for the feedback, but I didn’t do a background replacement. That was an actual background inside a hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

[Rizzo]

i had friends get married in vegas last year and some of their photos were so tacky and cheesy it was ridiculous. i guess vegas and cruise ships are where fauxtogs go to die, maybe? cause another pair of friends went on a cruise and he proposed to her there… but the photos done on the ship had them posed like it was their high school prom.

[cameraclicker]

@Alarnold:  That hotel offers a nice background.  I would shoot it just to have it available as a replacement background!   So you put her in front of the background and managed the shadows.  Equal points.  Still an excellent photo.

 

@Rizzo:  An interesting observation.  We have been on a couple of cruises and I thought what I saw of the cruise ships photographer’s work looked pretty good for what they are doing.  But on dress up for dinner night they set up photo booths and try to get passengers to stand for a photo while they are dressed for dinner.  They are standard poses reminiscent of prom poses.  Cruise ship photography is a study in repetition.  Everyone has a photo when they get on, then there is a photo or two at dinner, the occasional photo for the daily news reel and their studio shots.  They take thousands of photos every cruise, but there is not much range.

[fstopper89]

I had a drawn-out “argument” if you will via messages with one of the people mentioned here. It started out with me trying to give some advice (first, advising him to take down the “examples” he posted that he took from other photographers’ sites without their permission and re-uploaded to his) but when he saw this thread he said we all have no lives and were being arrogant, etc. I told him a large majority of his images were out of focus and underexposed and he came back at me saying that I picked apart all his work and just because I found one in 100 like that it was an unfair judgement. Well, it was not 1 in 100, it was nearly all. Though he had a handful that are completely overexposed. When we got talking he said he basically refused to change his ISO from 100. He usually shoots at 1/60 second. I said that is probably why they are ending up dark and blurry. He said he hates noise with a passion and that is why it’s unacceptable to shoot over ISO 100-200. It was frustrating reasoning with him, telling him to experiment more and expose for the available light, not for a predetermined setting he “likes.” Then, he picked a photo off my Flickr and told me that based on my settings, 1/125, ƒ/3.2, ISO 640, 91 mm and said that is opening the lens up to too much light thus overexposing the image. For one, the image wasn’t overexposed at all, for two, I exposed for the light- late evening in the woods. I don’t understand why he thinks that certain settings will over or underespose an image. Oh well, I tried to explain that. And he asked how I liked his HDR work. I stated in complete honesty that it didn’t look like true HDR, rather increasing saturation in post. I said HDR is where multiple exposures are carefully merged into one single image.  He said that my advice was not nice because that was “my slant” on how HDR is supposed to be done. Nooooo dude! That’s not my opinion, that’s a fact! He later said he didn’t expect a detailed explanation about why I didn’t like his HDR but expected a simple yes or no. Seriously? What photographer is going to say “No don’t like your photo.” and not expect the person to ask why? He said I was expecting him to clone my style in order to be a good photographer. Never did I allude to that either.

This whole thing proves to me more and more that a person unwilling to learn or take advice as constructive criticism (and not personal attacks) will never advance their skills. He kept saying he and I just have creative differences. Sigh. That’s not what it was. He can continue to take pictures of the garbage cans and security fence in a backyard and oversaturate it and call it creative HDR, I really don’t care. But I was trying to give some sound advice.

[Sarah]

Its useless to try and talk to people like that. I had a similar experiance with a local photographer but i commented on his website not his photos & out of no where he attacks my photos. Anyway after a point its best to just ignore them. If they dont want help dont try to give it. Though i linked to (http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-hdr-photography) on one of the “hdr” photos.

[seth]

Oh, hilarious.

If those settings always over exposed (or under exposed) an image, guess what, they wouldn’t be on the camera at all!

This is where what equipment you have DOES come into play.  Higher end cameras will handle higher ISOs better than the cheap ones.  Now someone give me $10k stat.

Creative Differences… the fauxtographer’s Ace in the Hole.

[seth]

I couldn’t finish my post because I’m still laughing about your slant on HDR.  Didn’t you know you were wrong, of course it’s not three exposures merged into one!  EVERYONE knows that HDR is obtained by sliding the saturation slider all the way up!  Get with it, BEG!

[dont.care]

I generally use 8 to 10 exposures when using the ‘HDR technique’

1) complete exposures

2) select all relevant exposures in MiniBridge

3) -> Open in HDR Pro

4) Click the drop down and click 32bit

5) Open Image

6) Save as TIFF

7) Open TIFF in ACR

..edit

[seth]

I’m not sure why I said three LOL.

[totemononsense]

There are two women from my hometown who have opened a fauxtography studio. I have wanted to post their pictures here for awhile, so here you go:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/320963_578410492173304_56652938_n.jpg

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/559423_459324250748596_521072871_n.jpg

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