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About says: “This is a page full of all my photography. I took all the pictures, and I’m not professional so not all my pictures are great. But please enjoy my photos.”, so Megan (“Meme’s photography”) is not fair game if she is just doing a favour for friends. Camo was probably the couples’ choice.

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This site was the target of a lot of spam. It was redesigned and that seems to have helped but most of those who were active have switched their focus to other sites. I don’t know how many views/responses you will get.

I clicked on “Image for Critique” and was treated to a very good image of a young man. There is a little redness around his nose that makes me think he may be fighting a cold or allergies. And I think moving further from the brick wall would put it more out of focus. As it is, I think it’s an excellent portrait. It could be improved with some post work but it’s not really necessary.

A good way to gauge your ability relative to others is to join a photo club, either bricks and mortar or Internet based, and take part in their photo contests. You could also submit photos to their critique queue to see what suggestions other members might have.

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Yeah! The links appeared, and work!

One other quick thought: You don’t say why you took the photos. I have tens of thousands of photos that I took to show something, rather than for art. Lots of record shots. For instance, a niece was studying animation and expressed that she found animating horses to be a pain because it was hard to get the legs correct. I was at the Royal Winter Fair and they were running horses around in one of the rings. I set my camera to 5 fps and spent a few hundred frames tracking horses. None are artistic in the least, but they show exactly how the legs move, so they were valuable as a study tool.

There are many reasons for taking a photo, if you take a photo for one reason and it meets the need, don’t let someone tell you the photo is not good because it doesn’t meet their expectations in another context.

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Is he? I have no idea. It does appear his standards are higher than yours. But, if you are just starting out you can learn. At least the photos look reasonably focused. Technically not bad. Not terribly artistic.
I have no idea if the links will appear. I typed “dance” into the 500px search engine and got a lot of samples. Here, I hope, are links to a few:
https://500px.com/photo/67765187/sail-by-kit-anghell
https://500px.com/photo/5250029/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B5%D1%82-1-by-alexey-mistryukov
https://500px.com/photo/69094441/anna-by-anton-belovodchenko
https://500px.com/photo/77237883/desiree-by-infinitive-studios
https://500px.com/photo/50221418/%D0%B2-%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B9-%D0%BF%D0%B0%D1%87%D0%BA%D0%B5-by-georg-shoes-sapojnikov-

So, if the links appear, how does the collection from 500px.com compare to what you showed us?

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This may be a duplicate. The first time did not appear to actually post, possibly due to the links which have been removed for this version… If you put your photos on Flickr, it will be easier to refer to them with links.
Not awesome, but not bad.
I suspect you have the 55-200 mm lens, not a 55-20 mm one.

So. Mostly the usual stuff. Watch your backgrounds, stuff creeps in. Faster glass, wide open, would let you blur the background more which might help in some cases. Pay more attention to light, the eye goes to bright and in-focus.

A bright half background like img_6150.jpg has will draw the eye to the background. Try cropping it at the edge of the barn. See what you think. With light like the girl is in, popping a flash would add catch light to the eyes. That might be good, or it might reflect too much off her glasses. Next time, set a low power flash pop for a shot or two to see the effect.

With img_5454.jpg did you try standing in the bright area behind them and have them just turn around where they were standing? How did that work? I think it might work better. Again, with the way the photo was taken, I would expect a low power flash pop to light their eyes.

The camera’s pop-up flash will probably only work to 1/200th or so. To get a faster shutter speed, you need High Speed Sync, which is available with a Canon flash in the hot shoe.

In 5 girls, a low power flash would light their eye sockets and give catch lights, which would make them look better. Also, since a photo is two dimensional, a woman with shoulders square to the camera usually does not look as good as if one shoulder is closer than the other. Check out other people’s wedding photos on-line to see what you like, then try to remember those poses when taking your photos. If memory is not good, print some or add them to your phone so you can carry a reminder. The middle woman is doing a good job of channelling Taylor Swift, but she has a bridge support tower growing out of her head. It helps that it is in the fog and not sharp, but it would be even better if it were off to the side of them. The bridge deck cuts through behind them, also better to avoid that if you can by being a bit higher or lower when taking the shot.

That’s enough for now. Others may chime in, too. You are doing fine. Keep going.

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I didn’t recognize the name. Looking him up, I realized I have “liked” a number of his photos on 500px: https://500px.com/jakeolsonstudios. 500px has a large thumbnails page format so you can see a lot of images at once. There is a definite consistency to his photos, and a similarity to others who post at 500px, like https://500px.com/liliaalvarado. Though, Jake’s photos have somewhat more even photography and post processing. Also, if I had a road like that near me, I would probably use it a lot too! His bio says he is published by a number of magazines including National Geographic. That speaks to quality photography.

I still have no understanding of Jake’s character. He could be a really nice guy, a jerk, or worse, … I have no idea and can’t comment on that.

Just curious, of the other photographers out there. Are you a narcissist? Do you belittle your clients? Are you just so good at your craft that everyone else’s work look like kindergarten crayon work?
How does this business model work for you, I am curios.

Let’s talk politics for a moment. I’m in Toronto, Canada. We had a mayor that everyone heard about. He worked hard to return constituent’s calls, but he was very conservative and always went on about how well he was doing his job and how much money he was saving us. Then we had an ice storm and the money he saved us by not trimming trees came back to bite us because power lines went down all over and people were without electricity in the middle of a cold winter, for a week or more! At the next election there was a lot of strategic voting to ensure we got a new mayor because the electoral system is first past the post and this guy’s support was still running at around 30%! We also just changed federal parties for much the same reason and again there was a lot of strategic voting to ensure the Conservatives did not form another government. Now the amazing part: We get to watch the US Presidential Election process. Trump seems to be doing pretty well. Based on what we have seen so far, he would be worse than either of the guys we threw out of office! He calls people names. He insults. He has no actual policies. He just keeps repeating he is going to make America great again, and America is going to win so much people will get tired of winning! If he gets elected there will be a major train wreck, but he sure seems to be doing well at the moment. That business model seems to work for Trump.

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https://www.facebook.com/CTLSphotography/photos/pb.480362952039060.-2207520000.1455474911./722003427875010/?type=3&theater

They rent and decorate a Bentley automobile, then get a photographer that blows out the detail in the wedding dress.  They probably had three rides in the car.  The  photos should last a lifetime or two.  Obviously the priority should be the car.

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Wow!  Where to begin?

The bad news:  The teacher is the teacher and if she is your teacher, she gets to give you a passing or failing grade.  Math is a great subject because there is a correct answer and usually many incorrect ones.  In base 10, 2 + 2 = 4.  Always.  Science class is pretty cool, combine oxygen and hydrogen in an inverted cup then add a spark — the explosion moves the cup and creates water vapor.   Leave out an ingredient or add the wrong ingredient and you don’t get the desired result.  Not that there aren’t oddities, way back in the beginning of working with electricity it was believed that protons moved to cause current, now we know it is the electrons that move.  The calculation gives the same numeric magnitude either way but calculations are still usually done with the flow from positive to negative instead of from negative to positive.  Art is much more subjective.  How do you measure the quality of emotion?  Forced and hammy or understated and natural are in the eye of the beholder.  You may find you agree with a movie critic, or you may find watching movies the critic hated is the way to an enjoyable movie experience.  Unfortunately for you, your critic is the one handing out marks.

In the interest of full disclosure I will tell you I’m a techie.  I took science classes at every opportunity and hated English and history classes.  Looking back, from a great distance, at the time I spent in primary and high school, I see the teachers were human, and frequently misinformed.  Such is life.

With that out of the way, let’s look at your About page.  The page says:

In my work, I explore the limitations of humanity.  Whether I demonstrate this limitation through an environmental context, a religious context, or a feminist context (all common motifs in my work), this exploration exists as a dialogue between two opposing forces: limitation and idealism.

Pardon me!  Humans are limited by being poor at breathing under water, by being born, and by death.  We are the only species that collectively have visited the bottom of the ocean and the moon.  Humanity doesn’t seem very limited.  Most of the rest of the text reads much like the noise my English teachers always liked so much.  It sounds wonderful but doesn’t provide much useful information.

Before commenting on your photos, here are a couple of links to web sites belonging to people who studied written arts:

https://aboutrc.smugmug.com/AboutRC

http://portfolio.joemcnally.com/#!/index

I throw those links to you because they are both excellent photographers, they both do lots of portraits, and you might enjoy their work if you are not already familiar with it.

 

On to your photos:  The same photo seems to be in a couple of places in a fairly small web page.  It might be better to have each photo in just one place.

Concentrating on Reality, I have to say the photos look pretty good to me. The weakest is probably “untitled (Girl with Dress and Flowers)” since I thought we were looking at her back!  I figured out either her feet are on backwards, or her face is not lit.  That might be why your teacher complained about poorly lit and confusing?  Next weakest is “Ellie”, which looks like you got loose with your camera in a hair salon and took a candid ambient light photo which didn’t work out.  “Hailey (outside)” may be what you were hoping for, it just doesn’t do much for me.   “Sam and Buttons in Sedalia” is another dud.  A horse’s ass?  Really?

I bet peeling the tape off, after you shot “Genderfluidity”, there was an ouch moment or two.  Technically the shot is pretty good but it doesn’t speak to me except as being a somewhat goofy posed photo of a guy with tape and lipstick.

The rest seem pretty reasonable.

“Cam” is an example of pretty good lighting.  My wife wouldn’t like it because there are shadows, that is her personal taste.  Not everyone will like everything, or perhaps anything.  Don’t let it get you down.  The hair doesn’t blend into the background.  You see his eye.  You see where his ear is, though not into it.  For that sort of photo it is well done.  Some portrait photographers like to have the nose not cross the cheek line and show a little skin at the far edge of the far eye, while not losing the notch between cheek and forehead.  Turning the head as far as Cam has, they would have him turn further until the far eye disappeared.  It is a style thing.  Like rule of thirds, you don’t really have to follow it, just know it exists.

“Sarah” has an early Hollywood glamour feel to it.  A hair light might have helped separate her hair from the background but it’s not absolutely necessary.

“Isabelle, Chloë, Madeline” look like they are in meditation class.  Perhaps they are just thankful they survived the “Line and Triplet” shoot, or they’re praying you won’t ask for another set like that.

In summary, if they were a bunch of photos on a wall in a gallery I wouldn’t think many were out of place.  At the same time they could be better.  I don’t know if they reflect the assignment as I don’t know what the assignment was.

A last thought, if the teacher says “bizarre, confusing, and poorly lit, with forced and hammy emotions”, have her point to the photo and explain her feelings about the photo.  Then have her explain what she thinks should be different.

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If they have the look and feel you want then you are on the right track.

I only have a minute or two, so a couple of quick observations:

I suspect the kids in IMG_7645.JPG are the same ones in IMG_0131-01-01-01-01-01.jpeg and IMG_0159-1-01-01.jpeg.  Their skin in the 0131 and 0159 ones is much darker and more yellow.  Darkness and incandescent lighting I think.  If you reset white balance for the tree lights, the child’s skin becomes much closer to that in your daylight photos.  The tree loses its warm yellow tone.  You can have warm tree and normal skin tone by a slow-ish shutter speed and a low to medium power flash.  Or, you can do two layers in your editor, one for the tree with the incandescent yellow and one with incandescent white balance to give corrected colours.  Merge them using a mask.  Adjust layer opacity if you want to warm the child’s skin or cool the tree a little.

Try to focus on the near eye when there is only one person in the photo.  When you have a group use enough DOF to have everyone reasonably sharp.

I don’t see EXIF data.  In some cases, we can tell more if the data is present.  If you save instead of saving for web, the EXIF data may stay with the image.

Sometimes it can be hard.  Try not to shoot up the nose.

In IMG_9458.jpg, without EXIF data I can’t see if the noise is due to processing, too high ISO, or an exposure issue.  Panning very slightly left or drawing back slightly would give more of the other girl’s face, which would make the photo better in her mother’s eyes.

 

Got to run.  Questions or rebuttal welcome.  Will check back when I can and others may join in too.

 

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Still looking for SEO?

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EyeDocPhotog, I’m not feeling it either.  I think the weatherman missed the memo too!  We have people hanging out in the parks in T shirts!  Great for our civic budget but hard to get in the mood with no snow.

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Many of the more mainstream photography forums seem to have suffered a downturn in usage.  A couple are expected to close early in the new year.  None of those have suffered the spam this site has, though.  Still, all of it seems a shame.

 

I’ll take this opportunity to wish both of you, and any of the other regulars that may stop by, a very merry Christmas or a happy holiday season, as your individual beliefs dictate.

 

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Picstop,

I have to be honest, I don’t know of any photographers worth their salt (and are legit and profitable) that shoot and burn.  ”Sure I’ll do half the job for you!”.  But I have run into people with talent claiming to use that model successfully. They say they just charge what they would make on print sales up front. So they charge an extra $1000 or more to make up for the loss and leave their customers to deal with printing. Then when I say anything negative about charging for prints and not providing them, or about the possible low quality, they come back with something like “well… I always recommend they get their larger prints/products through me”.  ”Ok, so you DO sell prints on top of already charging them for prints?!”.  It just goes round and round and I can’t make it make sense to me.

very few fall into this category though, most that shoot and burn are fauxtographers. Either because they have no business sense, or because they have no talent or care about what they do

 

IHF, I see how that model can work.  If you want the files without printing, the files are prepared, which is 98 or 99% of the cost of printing, anyway.  The photographer charges accordingly, and you, the customer, receive copies of the files.  If you then decide you do want the photographer to provide prints, the printing is done at cost plus a reasonable markup for that part of the job.  That is probably a little more expensive than having printing done as part of the initial order, but it is also more painful for the photographer because the initial job was wrapped up, then everything has to be gotten out again, reorganized and printed, or sent to the lab for printing.

In one of her videos, Bambi Cantrell talks about customers who want to know why one of her prints is $250.00 when they can go to Costco/Walmart/Walgreen’s, wherever, and get a print for $5.  She tells them they can have a print for $1.29.  When they think that’s a good idea, she goes into her office and gets a blank sheet of photo paper to give to them.  She tells them if they are happy with the blank paper, they can have it at cost.  If they want her photo on that paper, then the cost is $250.00.

I have had printing done at Costco, Walmart, and a number of other local places.  Quality varies from order to order, even during the same hour!  Most serious photographers can print small orders themselves and know where to send a larger order to ensure both consistency and quality.

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The link goes to a wedding blog.  I’m not sure if anything is being sold or it is someone’s hobby project.  All the photos I checked seem to be stock shots.  The post here seems to be research for the blog.

So, the question is: “Is there any way to hire a wedding photographer and just pay for the electronic prints and print them ourselves own cost? I just don’t see the point in having them print a $400 album that I could do myself for much cheaper. How much on average is a good photographer?”

The short answer, of course, is “Yes, you can have someone shoot the wedding for next to nothing, then you can print yourself”.  I did that.  I gave my brother a bag full of film and told him he was the photographer for the day.  We arranged people for posed shots and he took the photos.  For those shots he was in, someone else was given the camera.  The film was developed and prints were made by the lab.  Later the film was scanned and eventually a book was made.  It was a budget exercise but it worked out.  It wasn’t much of a risk since I had seen lots of his photos.

I started out shooting slides.  I liked slides because they are easy to share with a large group, and because the lab that developed them was consistent.  They were always developed the same way and by the time anyone saw the image, it was a done deal.  There was no lab person looking at the print and deciding it had to be brighter or a different colour.  Of course, I could do my own printing but that required setting up and taking down a darkroom, and it involved smelly chemicals.  B&W wasn’t too bad but colour was a real pain.  It was too much work so I seldom bothered.  Digital fixed all that.  You can email a photo to a group, or you can post it on a web page, and each person can look at it in their own time.  Editing is clean and simple, load it into the computer, convert it and crop as desired.  Clean and simple with no stinky, possibly cancer causing, chemicals to deal with.  Minimal clean up, just deleting some files instead of having to get rid of those chemicals.  Digital is so much nicer.

Slides look great projected on a screen, but if you give a slide to the average lab and ask for a print, the result is very dark.  Those that know what they are doing can get a good print from a slide.  We know that because National Geographic had all their photographers shoot slide film for years and their magazine was full of gorgeous photos.  Digital is similar.  The monitor has its own light source and usually it is pretty bright.  If I print from what looks good on the monitor it is too dark.  That happens regardless of using my own printer, printing at Costco (or wherever), or printing a book.  So, I have scripts that run when I will be making a print.  The output is adjusted in several ways, based on where the printing will be done.

I’ll give set of photos suitable for viewing on a monitor.  Some people will print from them but the print will usually look too dark.   Sometimes there will be ratio problems.  A 4 X 6 is the shape of 8 X 12, not 8 X 10, for instance, so something has to give.  If the process is automated, you may not get the image you are expecting.

Getting back to the part of the question that went “I just don’t see the point in having them print a $400 album that I could do myself for much cheaper.”  The subject is a wedding.  The bride may want photos to send with thank you cards.  She may want something for the mantle, or to hang on the wall.  She will probably want a book of some sort to keep the photos in order while carrying them around to show friends and relatives that could not attend the wedding.  And she may want the book twenty years down the road to show her own children and other relatives that were not born at the time of the wedding.  She may want the book sixty years down the road for the same reason.  Not all photos are created equal.  Not only does what the photographer does affect the photo, but the materials used affect the photo.  The photographer is responsible for the composition, and the actual exposure – how bright, how much depth of field, etc.  That’s partly locked in when the shutter is released.  After that the question becomes how is the image rendered.  Put the photo on 40 different monitors, you will probably see 30 to 40 different variations of the photo unless all the monitors were calibrated before you displayed the image.  Print on different grades of paper with different printing technologies and you will see immediate differences in the print.  Store those prints for 50 years and you will see vast differences when you look at those prints.  Many people who had wedding photos done in the 1950’s or 1960’s now have very faded photos because of the printing method of the day.  Now you can print on acid free paper with pigment based inks and the life of a print can be in excess of 200 years.  Or you can print with a dye based ink that will smear and fade.   Who cares, you say!  Well, they are wedding photos and someone three generations into the future may really enjoy seeing what grandmother looked like on her wedding day.  That probably won’t be possible if the photos were shot to a DVD and left to the bride to print at the cheapest place she could use.

Books are a similar situation.  The publishers I deal with offer different grades of book, and other publishers offer much cheaper books than the lowest grade I’m offered.  What paper is used, what ink is used, what the printing process is, what the binding process is, what materials go into the cover, all of that affects the price, and the longevity of the book.  Which is the better deal, a book you print for yourself that costs $120 but falls apart in 5 years, or one the photographer prints for you that costs $400 and is still in good condition when your great grandchildren want to look at it?  It’s a book of the memory of your wedding day.  It’s a custom product.  You can’t run down the street to the local Chapters, or go on line to Amazon, and order another if yours falls apart.  They don’t have one.  And after ten or twenty years, will you still be able to find your digital files on the DVD?  Will you still have a computer that can read those files?  If you can, will you spend the time to lay out a new book with the discount publisher of the day?

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I’ve shot railroad tracks quite a few times.  Where else would you find trains?

It’s not shooting on railroad tracks that makes you a fauxtog.  Shooting models who are standing, sitting, or laying, on railroad tracks may be a characteristic of fauxtogs though.

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