Opinions on my photographs?

[Anonymous]

Okay guys, here I am looking to see if I would be considered a fauxtog, and to get any advice you guys may have about my photographs. I am going to school for my accociates degree in photography, possibly even my bachelors, I haven’t decided yet. With that being said, I haven’t been in school but for two weeks, but photography has been a really big thing for me since I was about 10 years old. The photos I am going to post as taken with just a silly little Nikon Coolplix camera because I come from a family with not much money, and a DSLR camera was out of the option. However, I am getting a DSLR as soon as possible for school, and I think with just an average typical point and shoot that my photos are not that horrible. They also are not edited, I ran out of my trial for Photoshop, I’m waiting for my full version to get here, and I don’t want to you some internet set like ipiccy.com, photomonkey.com, etc. So please, tell me what you think! 🙂

 

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry, I posted pictures, but apparently they didn’t save. You can view my photographs at http://s1311.beta.photobucket.com/user/t_kristine/library/. This is only a few photos of my little cousin. I had to wipe my computer, and I lost EVERYTHING. I have older files saved to a flash drive, but wouldn’t you know, when I need it, I can’t find it.

[fstopper89]

She’s an adorable subject, but the quality of the photos I would not yet consider “portrait” quality. There is distortion since a point-and-shoot has such a small lens, there are some focus issues, the white balance is off, and some have a lot of distractions in the background. As long as you’re not advertising yourself as a photographer or charging clients, you’re not a fauxtog. You’re taking the right road by going to school and studying up on the subject. Huge step in the right direction, as most fauxtogs have no education and typically they say it’s not even necessary. A lot of colleges will loan/rent cameras. See if you can do that for a week at a time or a weekend and use your friends as practice models. Make sure you put the camera in Manual mode and play with the settings yourself. Take what you’re learning in class and keep a notebook to remember what all the settings mean. That’s what helped me when I was in college. I had my little cheat notebook and I often referred to it! lol. Just keep doing what you’re doing and once you feel you have a good understanding, maybe start doing shoots for friends and family. Just take it in steps if you really wish to be a portrait photographer in the future. You can’t fail as long as you keep making yourself improve.

[fstopper89]

Also- get a Flickr account, viewing all the amazing photos on there will help inspire you. It’ll give you ideas for posing people too.

Here’s my Flickr page. http://www.flickr.com/photos/roxanne_elise_photography/

[cameraclicker]

If you are in school, you are a student, not a fauxtographer.

If your subject gets too close to a short lens, distortion happens.

In addition to Flickr you might look at 500px.com for inspiration.

Backing up your files is important.  Backing up your files is now relatively inexpensive.  I was at Tiger Direct this morning and noticed their WD 3 TB USB external drive was $140!  They work with notebooks or desktop machines.  If the file is on your computer’s main drive and on a couple of external drives the chance of losing it is reduced.  For important files people get a couple of the drives, copy their data then move one of the drives to another location, like work and home, or put one in a fireproof safe that is difficult to steal.  You want to protect from three main events, mechanical failure, theft, and fire or flood.  If you go the fireproof safe route, remember fire can cause structures to fail and firemen frequently cause a flood while putting out the fire.  Hard drives do not like mechanical shock, too much heat or water.

[fstopper89]

In addition to an external drive, invest the $40 per year for a SmugMug account. Unlimited jpg file storage. I’m slowly but surely backing up all my image files. I back up client photos after I finish their session. My personal photos are taking forever, I have so many!

[Author]

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