I asked once before but I'm asking again

[VampireKetsuki]

Am I a fauxtographer?

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/

It’s still under construction (one of the folders is currently empty, they’re uploaded but not submitted yet, I ran out of energy)

And please tell me why I’m a fauxtographer, if you think I am

[nesgran]

It looks that way I’m afraid, here’s my selection of faux photos

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-14-457551278 (poop up flash and camera rotated the wrong way, some weird blur going on.)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-19-457551246 (what happened here, was the background really that bad so you needed to cut it away and put a border in there?)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-8-457551307 (why the blur? Light coming from the other side would have been more flattering as now you’ve made her arm even bigger.This could have been a good classical wedding shot, you’re nearly there)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-16-457551263 (sepia is far too strong and looks instagram, this will not age well)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-7-457551313 (too much back light and too little light from front, since you lifted the shadows so much the noise is awful)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-10-457551295 (blurry and you have a dirty wall behind)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-17-457551260 (while I’m not a fan of selective colour this actually worked pretty well, shame it wasn’t pulled off technically)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-6-457551321 (this is a lot of direct flash. This shot will not age well either with that amount of grain and muddy blacks)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-18-457551252 (four out of five people looking into the camera but two pairs of eyes are barely visible behind the reflections in their glasses, you need light from the side for these situations. There is also a massive blob of light on the back wall)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-15-457551271 (midday sun without shade isn’t a good idea, could you not have gone there a bit later in the evening? Focus appears to be on the railing)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/ChurchRainbow-8-397006372 (why is the church leaning off to one side, why is there so much noise, why is there no symmetry going on?)

Don’t get too disheartened though. I think you’ve done well with the basics of most of the posed shots. What has let you down is your technical ability and most of all your post processing. I’d want to give you an assignment, plop the raw files of all these shots into lightroom. What you can’t edit with the sliders and healing brush is too much. You are not allowed to do the black and white either. If the photo isn’t good then it needs to go into the bin.

In the mean time, please don’t solicit your wedding photography services. You are going to get sued otherwise.

[Worst Case Scenario]

Well I only looked in one folder ( wedding 21) and I saw bad colour, high light burn out, bad posing, messy backgrounds, spot colour, bad cut outs, flash shadow, noise, unsharp images, tilted horizons, white vignettes, bad B/W and a shot that I have no idea what it’s meant to be of!

I think you’ve ticked all the boxes for a Faux, but at least you are asking for confirmation so you must of had a inkling.

[EyeDocPhotog]

Now that you know, it’s time to stop asking and start DOING.

Learn what it takes to produce above-average photographs – focus, lighting, shadows, color, composition & editing. And that’s not an exhaustive list…

My first personal goal was to see, in depth, EVERY setting of my camera and how a change to one affected the final photo. That took about a year of spare time and roughly 11,000 photos. My next goal was to find out the INTERPLAY between each one of the settings (ie., how a change in one function might necessitate a tweak somewhere else to keep the photo the same). That was more difficult, and took roughly 2 yrs.

The 3rd and final challenge for me was to produce shots, look at them on the computer and TRY to see what I had done wrong – why is it blurry, too dim, too bright, washed out, poorly composed. This last goal seemed to take forever.

There was a day when I looked at my photo and said to myself “Oh man, I forgot to juice the ISO because I need a fast shutter and the venue is too dim.” That’s when I realized the LEARNING had actually BEGUN. 🙂

Good luck!

[VampireKetsuki]

I knew some of these would be picked. Weddings 7, 8, 14 and 19 were class assignments, 19 was for a magazine class. 15 was between the wedding and reception, the only time the bride wanted to take for pictures

And the church pic was so noisy because flash isn’t allowed inside the cathedral.

Oh and the black and white wedding shots (1-6) were black and white (color process) film. The sepia one was added, but the b/w was actually b/w.

To Worst Case Scenario, what was the image you had no idea about?

[Worst Case Scenario]

Weddings 7, 8, 14 and 19 were class assignments,

Did you pass?

To Worst Case Scenario, what was the image you had no idea about?

It was a sort water reflection thing, I think. I really have no idea what it is….

[VampireKetsuki]

Yes I passed all my core (photo) classes. The only classes I ever failed were a math and a psychology class

…and I couldn’t see anything in the Wedding folder that you said you looked through that is like what you’re describing. However in my outdoor I found http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Outdoor-9-397008944 if that’s the photo in question it’s demonstrating underwater photography. It’s more fine-art style photo.

[cameraclicker]

And the church pic was so noisy because flash isn’t allowed inside the cathedral.

Noise is in all electrical devices.  A weak signal is close to the noise so the noise becomes apparent.   A strong signal is above the noise and appears clear.  ISO is the gain control of an amplifier.  Just like with stereo systems, you want a good signal to amplify and you want a very clean front-end amplifier so it is not introducing noise that is amplified by subsequent stages.  Physically larger sensors provide a better signal and usually more expensive cameras have better, lower noise amplifiers.  Those are the building blocks that go into the file your camera produces.

A lot of effort has gone into raw processing software.  Adobe Camera Raw has pretty impressive noise suppression.  DXO may have even better noise suppression.  This was shot with a Canon Rebel T2i/550D at ISO 12,800, then double processed with DXO, once for the scene and once for the screen, then the results were combined in Photoshop to get the final image.

This was shot at 1/2oth, instead of 1/30th, so there is a little more brightness, a little more signal.  It seems that makes it easier to get a clean result.  Of course, any movement blurs at those slow shutter speeds.  With better gear, you can get better numbers but there may be less depth of field.  A 5D Mk III or a 1Dx can deliver a stop or two more ISO, as can a Nikon D4s, and fast primes at f/1.4 can deliver 4 stops more light than the f/5.6 I had available.  Even in the crummy light, better gear could deliver 1/250th or even 1/500th with the same file quality the Rebel produced at 1/30th.  That might give some latitude to back off on ISO to get less noise or to stop down a little to get better depth and sharpness.

If you have raw files, software may be a solution to a cleaner image.  Processing out noise is an interesting exercise in a geeky sort of way.  It is time consuming though.  This level of noise reduction takes about 7 minutes on a really high end processor, for each pass.

If you are shooting architecture, you usually have time on your side.  You can shoot at low ISO, even with a slow lens or smaller aperture.  Exposure time will be longer, so you have to use a tripod, a clamp, or some furniture to provide a stable platform for the camera.  Sometimes that provides an additional benefit.  A really long shutter speed will remove moving people from the scene since they are not in one place long enough to register.

[EyeDocPhotog]

DXO may have even better noise suppression.

In my experiences, if my goal is good noise reduction with the least user input work (I can’t think of a time when this wasn’t the case!), DxO wins CONSISTENTLY hands down – but I have a 2013 12-core, 32G ram Mac Pro which skews my curve in terms of time. For about maybe a year, at which time a salesperson somewhere will say “12-core, 32G ram?! Hey Tony, get a load of the dinosaur this guy has in his basement! You can’t even play Tetris Time Machine with that!”

If you want to ‘pixel-peep’ your way through the image to reduce noise, maybe dFine or Noise Ninja (or maybe Neat Image) would perform perhaps a notch better – at the expense of SIGNIFICANT workload from the human editor.

I have all four of those programs but only use DxO, and only if I’m shooting with my 50D which is not too often. The 1Dx provides for significantly higher ISO with minimal NR software use beyond LR5 – in fact, I can’t recall EVER needing to use DxO with a full frame sensor. But, then again, I’m not selling any images. I guess everyone has their own needs.

As with anything computer based the old, tried-n-true rule to remember is: Speed, Reliability, Low Cost – pick any two.

 

[cameraclicker]

We always advertised the “rule” as “Speed, Quality, Low Cost — pick any two”.  I have no problem giving you Speed, Reliability and Low Cost.  In an hour I can write a program for you that will run quickly and crash reliably.   😉

I picked up DXO Optics Pro 9 Elite last weekend because I wanted a raw converter that could deal with files from my wife’s Canon G16, as I was not getting desired results from DPP.  I got the Elite version because I wanted it to work with my full frame bodies too.  I have only used it on a couple of dozen photos and am still trying to work out how to get the most from the program.  There are two noise modes, High and Prime.  Output can be sent to a DNG file which drops into ACR, which is convenient.  High noise conversion takes seconds.  Prime noise conversion takes minutes, and pegs all cores at 100%  CPU usage for most of the processing.  Memory consumption has only been running around 5 to 6.5 GB.  Sometimes I get a perfect image.  Sometimes it is all smudged.  Brighter images seem to work better.  Or, I still haven’t found the right combination of the sliders for those images.

DXO has another trick.  It is the best perspective correction software I have seen!  It’s also pretty easy to use.  They have a separate package, but a basic version is in DXO Optics Pro and it is enough to fix a photo like the cathederal.  You can fix perspective in ACR and in Photoshop, but it is definitely easier and quicker in DXO Optics Pro.

[EyeDocPhotog]

you’re right, it is speed, quality & low cost – I guess the word reliable can be construed to mean “consistent performance,” whether or not that ‘performance’ is the desired effect. 🙂

 

[fautox1977]

I think it is time for you to pursue another profession.

I’ve looked both your profiles on deviantart. Yes the other 38 pages of photos. Most date 2011. Now it is 2014 and I do not see any improvement, although there are a couple of portraits that I liked.

I though you were just messing with us by asking to see your photos. Do you honestly believe that this is NOT fautography? Did you see any of the work of other photographers?

I am sorry, but based on what I see my answer would be “YES, You are a fautographer!”

[Worst Case Scenario]

I passed all my core (photo) classes.

Then you need a better tutor/course, cause you don’t seem to have picked up even the basics of composition, posing, colour management or exposure.

I knew some of these would be picked

So why are they even on display?

Weddings 7, 8, 14 and 19 were class assignments, 19 was for a magazine class.

Your deviant i.d  lists you as an artist and PROFESSIONAL photographer, yet you use pictures from classes assignments on your portfolio?

15 was between the wedding and reception, the only time the bride wanted to take for pictures

If you are a professional photographer, you decide when and where the pics are taken.

And the church pic was so noisy because flash isn’t allowed inside the cathedral.

 

Welcome to the real world! It’s not like photo class is it!

[IHF]

To be honest I don’t see much progression from your first post here and what you currently are doing.

 

Worst Case, It’s most likely a for profit school she’s attending, like Art institute of Pittsburg maybe?  They are notorious for giving good grades regardless of earning them.  This is to keep the student enrolled, engaged, and keep the money rolling in.  Most of the negative reviews for schools like this are given from staff.  Many teachers complaining  about not being able to teach, and/or enrollment/ office staff complaining that they are sales men and not meant to look out for the student’s best interests. Then there are the students who discover their credits don’t transfer properly, get tired of being sold to and going into debt, and those students who have had quite a time with the financial department.  Then there are some who catch on because of the students that are enrolled with them and how they aren’t working as hard, have missing assignments, sloppy work, and still getting good critiques and their grades aren’t affected.

I think it was the art institute of Pittsburgh (or one of the same types) that actually got sued federally because of miss use of grants?  or something of that sort.  But, that’s a whole different subject, that doesn’t really pertain.

Heads up people, legit art schools require a portfolio be submitted before you are accepted and start the process of enrolling and financial aid or whatnot.  You CAN be rejected if your art doesn’t cut the mustard, just as traditional 4 year colleges can reject you if your grades or academic achievements aren’t up to par.  If your art school doesn’t require a portfolio, and they start right in on the financials and pressure selling… RED FLAG!  Go get a subscription to kelby training, go to your local community college or something instead, or just plain work independently.  Don’t start your possible (only once you get established) $40,000 a year career in debt up to your eyeballs.

[VampireKetsuki]

Yes the other 38 pages of photos. Most date 2011.

I posted more on DeviantART before than I do now. I have a bunch in my sta.sh still that I need to submit, but I haven’t had the time.

So why are they even on display?

What I meant is they’re ones I should’ve put descriptions on.

Your deviant i.d  lists you as an artist and PROFESSIONAL photographer, yet you use pictures from classes assignments on your portfolio?

Professional, by definition, means you’ve been paid for your work. I’ve been paid to take photographs for two weddings so far. A third myself and another took photos for the bride as a wedding present. Of course I’ll use my class assignments until I become more established.

If you are a professional photographer, you decide when and where the pics are taken.

Not if the bride and groom have a set time they HAVE to be at the reception by.

Welcome to the real world! It’s not like photo class is it!

Why the attitude here?

 

Oh and yes I am a BS from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh

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