Home Forums Am I a Fauxtog? Kind of new am i a fauxtog?

Viewing 8 posts - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
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  • #23004
    jacksphoto
    Participant
    #23005
    nesgran
    Participant

    Difficult to say as I don’t know if you are charging but also more importantly none of these photos strike me as having a great earning potential. They are nice enough photos but what are you trying to get out of it?

    They are on the whole darker than I would think is reasonable, is your monitor really bright? Is your gamma adjusted correctly? The old stone building is a bit wonky in colour as well.

    #23010
    Worst Case Scenario
    Participant

    Nesgran has summed it up well, if you had charged someone to take these shots, you’d be guilty fauxography. But your site says you’re learning so fair do’s for asking.

    You seem to have a fairly god eye for a shot, but your colour and gamma are letting you down badly. The first shot is so dark I hardly make out what it is. If you have a monitor set up for gaming or watching movies, it will be useless for judging exposure.

    #23011
    EyeDocPhotog
    Participant

    Adding on to the other comments regarding color, I’d say either (a) shoot in jpeg but carry an expodisk to allow for custom WB or (b) shoot in RAW and use Lightroom for WB / tonal / color corrections AND use monitor calibration software like Colormunki.

    I can see that these are all practice shots, and that you seem to like bokeh 🙂 Bear in mind, however, that background blur will be add insult to injury if your eye is drawn to a subject which is not tack sharp and properly exposed.

    #23022
    IHF
    Participant

    I decided to look further and go to your website as well just to get more of a feel of where you are coming from and what you are trying to get from this critique.  If I peg you wrong I apologize, but it’s what your port tells me…so… If I’m wrong it’s up to you to have it tell people something else.  I’m going to assume that your interest isn’t with event and portrait photography, and maybe you are just looking to sell a few prints or maybe submit for licensing eventually? or maybe you just are looking for input so you can get better because you just love the process?

    awkwardly putting on my teacher hat for someone who’s an amateur like me and also has no idea at all what they are doing or why they do it  lol I HAVE been breaking even on my hobby though and completely pay for all my photography stuffs by sales of my finished work.  HA HA I break even, that’s how successful and bad ass I am at photography he he he  So take all I say with a grain of salt and keep in mind where it came from.  Not a pro here… far from it

    First, I want you to print and finish your work.  Shop for a good lab, and also learn how to print yourself as well.  This alone will help your photography tremendously.  I don’t care who you are…Print, finish, mount, and display your photographs.  When you start this process you will learn so very much about what makes a good photograph a good photograph.  Anyone can make an image look good on the web, but creating great prints… That’s a challenge.  It will even change the way you shoot and see things.  Your framing will change, your thought process will change, your compositions will get better.

    Learn about color managing.  This will go hand in hand with finishing your photographs (and why I knew you needed to start printing.  If you already are, then you need to print more).  It doesn’t look as though you are properly calibrated.  It’s a pain in the ass but it HAS to be done, and you will be thrilled you endured the torture of learning color management .  I promise

    Cull and edit your port.  If you have multiple shots of a composition or subject, chose only one.  Which one will make the cut?  The one that you yourself would pay $350 to $450 or more to print, finish, and display.  If you’re broke… why did you get started on this photography thing? lol Joking aside though.  If money is tight, ask yourself if you had $350 + to spend on art, would you spend it on finishing that photo large and have it prominently displayed in your home?  No?  Trash it.  Get it out of there!  (no, you don’t have to delete them, just create a port that isn’t a dumping ground, and remove it) Cull down to your 50 best photos, if you can cull further then by all means do it.  Culling is one of the very best exercises you can do for your photography.  It’s also very difficult, and sometimes very long process.  I tend to cull as I go.  If I add a picture to my port I ask myself if I HAD to remove one, which would it be?  9 times out of ten… I end up removing one, and you know what?  My baby, my “OMG I can’t beleive how much I really like this picture I made.  I just know this will always be a favorite” photo gets removed, and I don’t even miss it..  lol and no one else does either 😉

    #23023
    nesgran
    Participant

    IHF raises a good point about printing. I have had good experiences with peak imaging for prints in the UK. I know WCS uses someone else but can’t remember who

    #23025
    bananaslugs
    Participant

    Call me crazy (or maybe I need to calibrate MY monitor??) but I actually like the wonky colors although the colors in the stone building pictures are too wonky, even for me. Other than the stone shots and the random one with the selective coloring, I quite liked your shots.

    #23034
    cameraclicker
    Participant

    Looking at just the Flickr photos I see you can pan pretty well.  I like the bicycle rider photo because it conveys motion and also seems to convey time of day.  The bagpiper could stand some fill light either from a flash or done in Lightroom (which EXIF data says you use).  The car with headlights could stand a little fill, just on the car.  If you are shooting in raw, ACR has a spot adjustment brush that can help with that.

    The old phones and the next few are quite yellow due to incandescent light.  I think it works quite well in the phones photo and the light bulb photos, it may be too much in the others.

    The train coming into the subway station (tube station?) could stand some fill.  Adding more exposure would burn out the overhead lights, fill will remove some of the dinginess.

    The bench in the shade/bushes looks better in the thumbnail than full screen.  Different composition, contrast and lighting may help it but I didn’t take the time to examine options.

    This building is twisted:

    DSC_0126

    The left side is leaning toward us and the right side is leaning away.  In ACR, you can use the lens correction tool to fix that.

    The Stonehenge set looks like you tried out a lot of different post processing techniques and couldn’t find one you liked.  Some sky is posterized.  I loaded this one

    DSC_0554

    into ACR (yes, it will edit JPEG files too) and to my taste, about a stop of exposure and the fill slider moved to about a third, gives a pretty good result.  I haven’t made up my mind about cloning out the bird.  It’s cool that it was there.  It’s the same size as the people in the background.  Stonehenge is the famous rock collection.  I understand there are many similar sites.  Looking at your photos, I thought you had visited a different site, but I see “Stonehenge” in the text.  As an exercise, look up the photos of Stonehenge on the Internet, and see how yours compare.

    The tower

    DSC_0284

    needs straightening, and colour correction.  I used the concrete as a colour reference and got more realistic looking bricks.  It is unfortunate the top of the tower is missing.

    I’m out of time.  A summary might be that your photos are generally dark (brightness, not subject content) and mildly interesting.  Post processing needs work.  Keep shooting.  Keep exploring.  Keep learning.

     

     

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