How am I doing? Critiques/advice welcome

[rcphoto]

Hi,
this is where I am at as of today. I’ve started photography roughly 2 years ago. Started shooting portraits about a year ago.
What is on my Flickr page is a pretty good representation from my starting point up to today.
I have only been doing free shoots so far. My intention is to start doing paid shoots in the near future.
Any advice and/or critiques are more than welcome.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nightstormxx/
http://www.robertchoquette.com

[Worst Case Scenario]

I think you are on the wrong site? I don’t see any spot colour or white vignettes!  My only concern is that you STILL have to ask how you are doing????

Start charging ……  A LOT !

[cameraclicker]

How are you doing?  Pretty well!

Some people are born with a good eye, some have to work at it, and some are never going to get it.  You seem to be in the first group.  I understand your asking how you are doing.  It’s very similar to the hottest girl at school having no idea she is pretty.

WCS left out railroad tracks.  The map on your web page shows you are about 2 1/2 blocks from tracks and yet I don’t see any tracks on your Flickr page.

Your personal web page is pretty slow.  That will drive those in a hurry away.   Finding a way to load fewer images at a time, or loading images pre-sized to fit the monitor, are a couple of suggestions.

You don’t say what you are trying to achieve with your photos, so a couple of my comments may be out of context, but here goes:

This photo,

strikes me as one of the most contrived in your collection.  She is in a skydiving suit, with her helmet?  But, she is standing in woods beside rapids!  She should be in a big field, gathering her chute.

I really like this one

and I’m not a fan of most B&W.  Her leg is a little bright, and it’s not a portrait like your others, but I like it a lot.

Ha!  I found the railway!

She’s not really dressed to work on a train.  It works as a fashion shot, but coveralls and work boots would be more practical dress.  I suppose she could be a passenger, but she is on the engine.

This is in the same vein as the others,

why are her arms up like that?

Here is a video you might get something from:

 

 

 

 

[rcphoto]

urggg train tracks! I hate train tracks. It’s right up there with selective color and overly done HDR in my book. I did however cave in to taking this girls photo on a long retired train engine, at a museum. I know her personally and at the time I let her win. Ya, not a proud moment lol. But even if train tracks were the coolest thing ever, I wouldn’t shoot them, simply for safety reasons. It’s not worth it.

You are right on the skydiving suit being odd. It simply doesn’t make sense when looking through the rest of the photos. The story behind it is that her dad owns the skydiving company and wanted a shot with the suit on her, even though it didn’t really fit the location. In the end, it made dad happy and set a pleasant mood for the rest of the shoot. (dad was on location with us)

I don’t really use Flickr as a portfolio. I’m still debating if I should strip it down to only my best shots, or leave it as a personal progression timeline. Which it is right now. What is on my Flickr is pretty much my progression from my start, up to today. My website, Google+, 500px, youpics, instagram have a more stripped down, best shots only thing going on. I linked my Flickr site here to show where I’m at and where I came from. To lay my cards on the table so to speak.

I’d say that lately I’m focusing more on a fashion, sexy, boudoir look. I know I definitely don’t want to shoot weddings and/or kids. I would say that my past 3-4 photoshoots show what I want to shoot with a bit more consistency as opposed to the lesser consistent view of my entire Flickr gallery.

I will see what I can do about the load time of my website. On a self critic basis of my site, I really should bring my portfolio down to only 15-20 photos at the most. There are way to many at the moment.

[cameraclicker]

The customer is not always right, but the customer is always …  the customer.

I have train track photos.  Some of just track, and some with trains.  No models on tracks.  Any people, on the tracks in my photos, work for the railway.

Flickr is a great place.  Lots of free space and you can put a link to a photo in here and it displays.  Leaving it as a place to record personal growth and projects seems appropriate.  Your own web page is the place for your portfolio.

[rcphoto]

Let me rephrase that. I have nothing against the train tracks themselves. I hate the cliché, girl on the train tracks, guitar holding, suitcase sitting, train track shots. I am guilty of having done some for a friend of mine, but they aren’t and will never be on my website.

I switched up the load method for my website portfolio. Hopefully that helps. I still need to trim the fat in my portfolio though.

Thanks for the advice.

[nesgran]

I mostly looked at your flickr as your own website was too slow to load. Your latest shots are really good and you can see a great progression from your first flickr photos to your latest.

A couple of things that I thought looking at it:
Your black and whites don’t make any of your photos better. They look great in colour and the conversion just isn’t doing it for me.
Your 70-200 creates a pretty nervous bokeh in the forest surroundings but so does your 85/1.8. Take on some paying customers and put some money in the bank account before buying whichever is the go to portrait prime lens for Nikon. You deserve it.
With the super shallow depth of field there was one or two shots that aren’t completely in focus. One for example, blond girl with glasses her lips are in perfect focus but her eyes are a bit soft.

I wouldn’t dismiss weddings too easily. You can make it into what you want. Check out Moshe Zusman for example, his wedding photos don’t look far off what you are doing but it means he has a regular income which is not to be sniffed at while trying to learn. Being a good photographer is a very small part of being a working photographer and learning that side of things is only going to help you. It may be a temporary thing for a couple of years while you build a business or you might find that you need that income to keep you going and not having to take a second job flipping burgers.

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