Time to be constructive!

[Kylie]

I am still fairly new to this, but I have always been curious of the brutally honest (I love my family, but they sugar coat everything)

https://www.facebook.com/Kyliemerecedesphotography

Please let me know what you think! The good, the bad, and the ugly!

[stef]

Some of your stuff is pretty good! I am concerned about some of your focus points. For instance, you use a thin DOF on many of the boudoir shots (which works well in theory), but you’ll focus on something like an elbow in front, instead of the face behind. That looks like an accident to me. On another with a snake, you got the snake’s back in focus, but used far too thin DOF, and the actual subject (the girl) is completely OOF. Any viewer can tell there’s a snake, the interest should be on the girl, and she should be in focus. You should’ve cranked that down to f/5.6 or f/8. There are exceptions like if you were focusing on the snake’s head with an inobvious woman blended into the background blur, but for the most part, your focus point needs work. Use thin DOF wisely. It’s a great tool, but like any tool used improperly, it’ll give less than perfect results.

 

There’s one b/w of a woman sitting in a pond, that looks like scanned film. It has what looks like dust particles on it or a very dirty sensor. Water is tilty… looks wrong. Otherwise, that could be a very nice shot.

 

Suggestions:[ol][li]Use your DOF preview button. It’s on your camera for a reason, and works extremely well for up-close portraits. Or, mount your camera on a tripod and zoom in using live view + DOF preview… this will help a lot to get exactly what you want in focus to be spot on.[/li]

[li]Use spot focus. Your issues are probably from using a large area focus… use only a single focus point instead and focus on exactly what you want… usually the eyes.[/li]

[li]Ease up on the saturation knob.[/li]

[li]Convert to b/w by adjusting color channels manually. Looks like you’re just desaturating it, and that results in washed out images, often with bad skin tones.[/li]

[li]Very few images look good with a tilty horizon or water. Make the horizon level, or unseen.[/li]

[li]Work on your crops. Many bullseye crops that could be better, tilty horizons, and so on… Open up the area where people are looking, and close in the area where they’re looking away from. This keeps the viewer in the image better.[/li]

[li]Faces are sexy. Use them a lot on boudoir shots.[/li][/ol]

 

Overall your composition is decent with some work needed on cropping. Shooting boudoir can be quite difficult. You’re good at putting your subjects at ease, but there’s definitely some tenseness to a few of those shots that come through on the images. Consider some music of the subject’s choice, and start the shooting with a long lens from far away and move closer. You can also start with shots that don’t have the face at first. By the time you’re doing the real shots, the camera will be more like a piece of furniture. Set your camera to silent mode, too, if it has one, and keep a conversation going about pleasant things (like the guy she’s doing the shoot for, how much he’ll love the shots, etc).

 

You are not a fauxtographer.

 

[Kylie]

Thank you very much for your tips and advice!

[lovethissite]

I agree

[Author]

Posts