Home Forums Main YANAP Discussion Forum How do you tell them?

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  • #10264
    JimC
    Participant

    I’ve been wondering. When you know someone personally, and they post a photo that borders on fauxtography (or even crosses that border), how do you go about approaching them to tell them about the grand suckage of their work?

    I ask this because I have a friend who is actually a great photographer, but yesterday he posted a photo on his FB page that is not up to par with the work he usually does. Altogether the photo is great from a technical standpoint. The problem is that the subject of the photo has a tree growing out of his head. Literally, everything else in this photo is awesome. Had he taken a step to the left or a step to the right, it could be in a magazine. I’d like to point it out to him, but he’s a pretty well respected photographer in the area, and like I said, he’s great at his work 99.9999% of the time. I feel like if I say it, me being little more than an enthusiastic hobbyist, it could open me up for getting slammed and scrutinized. Not necessarily by him, but he has a lot of pro photographer friends, and so far, they’re all silent on this.

    #10265
    Worst Case Scenario
    Participant

    If you don’t know him well enough to say ” That sucks” then don’t!

    But it’s very easy to find faults in even the best picture. Unless you pressed the shutter you can’t know that there wasn’t a 1000ft canyon on the left and a landmine on the right.

    #10266
    cameraclicker
    Participant

    A tree growing out of someone’s head isn’t the end of the world.  If it is the only tree for 50 miles and the photo is posed, one would wonder why, but if the shot is more candid there may not be time to move before the expression is lost and moving would draw attention.  If there are a lot of trees, moving might just replace one tree with another.  Why was the photo taken?  Does the tree matter?

    We make a lot of fun of the stuff people post on Facebook, but is Facebook really the place to post your best work?  I saw an interesting statistic the other day.  If memory serves, it was that Facebook gets as many photos in a month as Flickr has had, ever!  Wow!  Certainly suggests they are not all going to be amazing, at least not in a good way.

    #10268
    JimC
    Participant

    WCS- I have no problem telling HIM that his photo isn’t up to his usual par, but he posts these publicly, where his other photog buddies and the clients he did the session for  are all able to see. I don’t want to call him out in front of everyone. These were engagement photos, and I’d hate to cost him a wedding contract if the couple see me criticizing what is a very one-off mistake.

    cameraclicker – It was a posed shot, and there were only two trees in the background. One off to the left edge of the frame, and the one on the right 1/3 line, where the guy and his fiance are standing. I agree, it’s not the biggest sin a photographer can make, and the depth of field in the shot does in fact give you enough of a sense of distance that you can tell the tree is 50 yards behind him. If any other photographer took the shot (myself included!) I’d think it were great. I just expect more from him based on his skill. I guess it would be like going to an upscale bbq ribs joint for dinner, and being served a McDonalds McRib sandwich. Can you eat it? Sure? Is it good? In the right context, it can be. Is it what you expected? No way.

    #10269
    nairbynairb
    Participant

    If you care enough to tell him, send him a private message?

     

    It seems like you’re making a bigger deal out of it than you should. If that’s the only thing wrong about the photo, it’s no where near fauxtographer-ish.

    #10270
    iliketag
    Participant

    Jim, why not just message him and ask about it? I think if you phrase things carefully enough, he won’t take any offense. He may go back to the image and think “Oops…” and will start watching for that a little closer in the future. That kind of merger is distracting, absolutely, but I wouldn’t say anything on the actual image. Once people notice or have that pointed out, they can’t necessarily unsee it.

    Facebook images are not always the best of someone’s lot. I think that’s known to a lot of photographers. Most togs I know and follow post a couple from a session as a sneak peek, then link to the blog. It’s not very often that they’ll create an album for each shoot, but more for each category and then drop those where appropriate.

    On the flip side of things, and I was going to post about this yesterday with some examples but I forgot…
    A friend of mine got maternity shots done, and she always used to tell me that when she was pregnant she wanted me to do them. Well, her college roommate got a T3 for Christmas so she had her do the shots because she asked (apparently I lost out because I didn’t ask her from what she told me…).
    The shots are terrible… and I’m not the only one of her friends who think so… but her family keeps posting “Oh these are so creative!” or “What a beautiful photo!”
    Nearly every “creative” shot is lifted directly from Pinterest with no variation… Should I just hold my tongue? I offered to do shots for her about a month ago and she told me “Oh, if I need any more I’ll let you know but I think I got everything I want.”

    #10276
    JCFindley
    Participant

    PM them as said above.

    Or as a friend of mine once told me, this one just doesn’t seem up to your normal standards. She was right but by God I had crawled through a cotton mouthed water gator infested swamp to get that shot and was too proud of what I went through to get the shot to notice how bad it sucked….

    (Though, PMs are still best for such things)

    #10277
    IHF
    Participant

    Telling a photographer who already gotten to the point of being able to self critique and has an understanding that everything they turn out isn’t a winner, is a completely different s scenario  than telling a new tog that’s still on their photography discovery high, that something is wrong.   A good friend of mine absolutely hated a small series of shots I took and edited quite differently than my usual clean way (I usually play around more with my snaps and personal pictures than I do with my actual photographs) Initially I made these images just to share on my personal Facebook to tell people about the park I just went to.  I receive such a positive response, and even had a purchase inquiry on one of them, that I went ahead and added them to my port.  He was tortured by it.  We got drunk one night, and he let it fly.  There was no butt hurt conversation between us, and I quickly went back to being more particular about what goes up for sale vs. personal junk.  A lot of togs will think “hey! It’s just one person’s opinion”.  That’s very doubtful to me.  I’m sure he was not the only one feeling the exact same way.  He was just the only one with enough balls and enough care and interest in my photography to say something.  I keep people like that around 🙂 and thank them profusely.

    if this tog is established and he knows you (as in you have had conversations before) it should be just fine as long as you do it privately.

    a faux or talented newbee on the fast track, is another story all together.  You have to remember back to the time when you thought you were pooping gold, even if it only lasted a couple weeks like it did myself .  Some people stay in that phase a very very VERY long time, some never escape it, and it shows lol.  When they aren’t treated with kid gloves, and are given the truth straight up… well you already know…this is YANAP after all.

    I talked privately with a tog once about an image she was using for her marketing all over her online presence.  It was an unfortunate shot.  While technically sound, it was… Well… it lead the eyes to believe it was something else entirely.  Something very inappropriate, and not what you want all over your newborn and family portrait advertising.  I wasn’t the only one snickering behind the scenes and having giggles, My pm box was very full that day, and even someone here had mentioned it to her.  She took it well and thanked me for letting her know, but she took the “she’s the only one that feels that way” approach, and it’s still up all over the place, for the world to see.  Why?  Not because she sucks, or because she is stupid, but because she hasn’t quite got out of the pooping gold phase, and she’s moving too fast.  It’s a difficult thing to read, because you can’t just tell by looking, especially if they have talent. you really never know how criticism will be received without first having a relationship of some sort with someone.  This is not to completely knock online criticism/critique, but it is much more difficult to give and receive in an online setting.

    #10804
    Intuition
    Participant

    I once mentioned on a pretty popular PS action sellers photo that there was an ackward hand placement in the photo. It was a rather dark toned photo, and the right hand of the model was in the top left and very bright in relation to the rest of the background, also it was only the fingers that where visable, so picture a floating half hand I guess. I don’t know what caused me to mention it, random bug up my arse or something. But I did, saying along the lines of you may want to darken the fingers a tad, they are a little off putting. ( floating random hand you know). and holy cow the butt hurt that came out of that little line. Basically I got a ” I put this image up to share, if I wanted critique I’d ask” in quite a few more words. I ended up unliking the page because of the way it was handled, although really it wasn’t anything newsworthy, but it just sort of shocked me. I guess I liken photography to art a little to much, I assume everyone is critiquing my work.

    #10814
    fuzzypiggy
    Participant

    Subtle way is to get them to compare to their own other good shots. “This  shot is not quite the same as your other one, XYZ. I really like the light/elements/lines, etc in XYZ, especially element A it worked much better in that shot than this one.”. If they’re as good as you say they are they will be very self-critical and go back, compare and will probably get the message.

    We all make errors of judgement, we let our standards slip once in a while, we’re only human. Ultimately if they’re as good as you say they are, they will be able to be self-critical and will take the advice. I prefer it when people tell me straight out that a shot is not working, then I can at least remove it, ask others why they think it’s not working, learn and move on. If you can’t take constructive criticism how will you ever improve your craft.

    #10875
    oldngrey
    Participant

    I prefer it when people tell me straight out that a shot is not working, then I can at least remove it, ask others why they think it’s not working, learn and move on. If you can’t take constructive criticism how will you ever improve your craft.

     

    I  depend on circle of other photogs to tell me when I have thrown out something is ghastly or not up to my usual standards. Sometimes I am so wrapped up the image because of the circumstances surrounding it; much like an earlier reference to crawling through cotton mouths and gators, that I get kind of tunnel visioned about the image. Another thought is that sometimes I just don’t care – I mean snapshots at a family gathering etc. are just that. Not every photo I take is an assignment, for sale or meant to be a great and wonderful piece of work. Sometimes I just grab a goofy snapshot of one of the dogs and share it…

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