honest opinions – get better or give up!!!

[spinrek]

I NEED to know if i have the basics to get develop and improve or should I just chuck in the towel?! (having a crisis of confidence )

Ive been asked by people (other than friends -yay!) to photograph them for money (because they like me, my way of working and down-to-earth-ness) but Im not sure Ive got what it takes creatively speaking?

So don’t be mean – but be honest! Do you think I should do more courses and get better or just go home and pack it all away!?

(Im a total wordpress beginner so I have put pics in low res, I know I need to resize them)

http://hazelnashphotography.wordpress.com/

 

Thanks 🙂

[AndreCosto]

You have a good eye for the moment, and I like your unadorned style. But the web site is difficult. If I click on a picture to see it full sized, I can’t back out to the gallery. It brings me back to the front page and I have to select the gallery again.

[spinrek]

thanks – I will try and sort it. Im actually in the process of (trying) to make a better site on moonfruit, but I have confused myself! I think I need to work out resizing issues – the ones on wordpress are not right!

[cameraclicker]

I was able to navigate your site without difficulty.  The arrows at screen edge are a long way from the image so not immediately obvious, but they scroll through a gallery.  The X at upper left is also unusually placed but worked fine.

Photos have a lot of grain and some could use flash and/or slightly different settings but are otherwise pretty good.  If people are seeing representative work and would like to pay you, I would let them.

My site is pure HTML.  If the page offers a different size and you select it, you get a new page with a new, resized photo.  Usually there is a thumbnail, 800 px wide and 1024 px wide image, though a couple of galleries only offer a single size.

[kbee]

spin, I like what you’ve got. By all means, don’t throw in the towel. As Andre said, you have a good eye and I can see you’ve put some thought and effort into your photos.

The site did confuse me until I saw the X in the top to get out of the gallery. Took me a bit but it’s nearly 1am, so maybe that’s me.

There are some things to be pointed out, such as frontal flash shots (young ring bearer in the doorway), motion blur (girl with the purple dress skipping along), selective coloring (bride kissing her groom) and focusing (bride on dance floor blurred with young ring bearer in black and white). A bit off in some white balance here and there and so on. The usual things that everybody, including me, has done.

I love – in photos2 – the girl in the hat in the snow, the two boys and the man on the floor (beautiful lighting there), and in photos3 the stone pile. Your lighting in the latter two is really quite nice, making a marked difference in your indoor wedding shots.

I think you could use a little more practice with flash photography, keeping a special eye on how to bounce it and prevent it from flattening out your subjects and making harsh shadows. The smaller resolutions might help to load faster, but that and the compression makes them pixelated and might not be doing some of your better shots justice.

So no, I wouldn’t tell you to quit. You’re already ahead of many of the photographers featured at YANAP, and the fact you’re asking says you’re interested in furthering more. Definitely I would encourage you to keep on learning and improving. The various subjects and results indicates you are a work in progress and not just stale, producing the same quality over and over. You have some good shots, so keep it up and go for it!

[Worst Case Scenario]

Don’t quit but you could use some more practice. You have a few shots showing that need to be culled ( especially the weird HDR sort of snooker table shot ). But over all you are a lot better than many and not a faux.

[dont.care]

With your attitude of a “preemptive strike” against ones own self, i.e., just throwing in the towel; I say give up..  If you don’t have faith in yourself, why should anyone else? People like confidence; lack thereof, is contagious and often times will show in your photographs. The best photographs aren’t ones that are expected. You have to have confidence to capture true emotion-opposed to a posed ‘picture’.  My advice is, get your head out of your ass and stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’ll never be anything if you’re sabotaging yourself with bullshit rhetoric.

 

edit:

Ps, never ever ever use selective color again. 😉

[spinrek]

Dont worry dont.care – I really wont be doing selective colour again! lol! I know it looks pretty rough but I had to give it a go – how do you know what your style is if you haven’t tried and experimented!  and as for confidence – I have confidence with people! I can deal with all sorts of people and keep them all happy , Im confident that my pics (yes even the crappy ones) are better than some of the togs charging where I live. I dont have enough confidence generally i guess! lol!

I know i need to keep practicing and improving and I know I need to produce a better group of pics rather than the ones I plonked into a wordpress site (yep like the snooker table one – it didnt quite work did it?)

Thankyou everyone! x

[kbee]

d.c keeping it real up in here! 😉

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