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If you have CS6, I would learn to use that for editing, I use Canon’s ZoomBrowserEX for viewing a folder full of images.  I just keep images in folders based on year and month.  If I am shooting a lot, I might also have day folders.  I usually do that when I get over a couple of hundred in a day because the smaller folder size increases performance of the software, which is trying to generate thumbnails of everything.

Photo Mechanic is recommended for people who shoot a lot in a day.  I tried it out, and liked it, but have not purchased it yet.  It suits me better than Lightroom.  A pro in Oakville that has a blog, seems to like Lightroom a lot.  Different strokes.

Highlights and shadows are what make a lot of photos.  Some photos look good with low contrast and others look good with high contrast.  There is no “right” answer.  It is a taste thing.  My wife likes bright restaurants.  She also likes to see everything in a photo and starts to give me grief if my shadows are dark.  Joe McNally quoting one of his mentors said “if you want something to be interesting, don’t light all of it.”

In September, I entered a slightly cropped version of this in a contest, and won! It is mostly shadow, and highlight. It helped that the theme of the contest was sunset in the city.

I have also done the photocopy paper trick.  And used table cloths, tea pots, someone’s black coat… Lots of things.  A grey card is 18% grey, which is what your camera’s meter tries to set everything to.  Using the card, you can get white balance and exposure all at the same time.

Flash falls off at the square of the distance, so pretty fast.  How far depends on the guide number of the flash and power setting.  I always love seeing the point & shoot crowd in a concert, firing their flash.  They are 500 feet from the stage with a flash that is good for 10 to 20 feet!  If you crank ISO, you can get further, but not with a point & shoot.  A 600 EX RT has a guide number of 60, I think, so you could boost ISO and get a couple of  hundred feet with it at full power, but at a concert it is bright enough you just need a good lens and a bit of ISO, without flash, so save your batteries.  I don’t have a 7D so I have no experience with that flash.  Try placing your model at 10 or 15 feet, whatever is comfortable, then try full flash, and keep taking photos while adjusting flash compensation until you are at minimum power.  Look at them all on the computer to see which one you like best.  If I am using on-camera flash, I usually use ETTL mode and P, Av or M depending on what I am looking for.  When I get into more lights, off camera, then M is the way to go for both camera and flash because it simplifies what is going on.  The camera in other modes has certain expectations and they may not be reality if it does not know about all the flash that is provided.

I don’t have the details but I know Atlanta has a camera club that meets regularly, has a contest of sorts where the judge critiques each photo presented.  I don’t know if you are into that sort of thing.  I can try to find out more if you are interested.

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LOL!  How I hate the “Professional” and “Amateur” labels.  “Semi-pro” is even worse!  “Part-time-pro” is no better.  Not saying anything about anyone’s work, just the labels.

I have a long list of photographers who’s work I think is wonderful.  Some of them are “amateurs” and some of them are “professionals”.  The best photos of insects that I have seen were done by a gentleman who took them for the love of doing it (definition of amateur) and put them up on pBase.  They are gorgeous.    I have also seen a lot of terrible photos and sadly, some of that work was done by “professionals”.

It is sad that some people equate amateur with inferior quality and professional with superior quality, when the definitions are:  amateurs do it for love and professionals do it for money.  Either group can do it well, or badly.

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Your girl in pink stripes is a little over exposed.   The dog looks a little flat.  The dog was shot in what skiers call “flat light” for just that reason, with no shadows you can’t see the bumps so skiing is harder.   Shadows help give depth, they are only a problem if they are too dark.

I love the cat.  I had one with similar colouring when I was about your age.  You might want to get out an editor and fix the green colour fringe but otherwise a lovely high key photo.  You pretty much nailed it!

The other two, of the girl in the print dress, are slightly over exposed, or the sky could be better managed.  That look is popular with some of the wedding photographers right now but it is a trendy look and will date those wedding albums.

Several of your subjects are square in the middle of the frame.  Look up “Rule of Thirds”, it’s just a rule but it might help.

You are doing fine.  Keep shooting.  Keep trying things.  Read.  Study other photos to see why you like them.  Enjoy.

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I should probably also point out that if you had used the pop-up flash, even at very low power, you would have catch lights in her eyes which would improve the photo.

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I thought the 7D had a pop-up flash?  You can probably pop it up, set it to 1/4 or 1/2 power and fill shadows?  Or, you can get some 20 X 30 foam board white on both sides to use as cheap reflectors.  I went through the scratch & dent bin at the local craft store and picked up a bunch for $2.50 each.  If you can find black with a mat finish, those are useful too.

Lightroom is a photo organizer that has a raw converter attached and can do some basic editing tricks and printing.  If it is all you need, that’s great.  I didn’t get along with the demo of LR3 and don’t want it to organize my photos so I don’t use it.

You have colour casts.  And, you have some very deep shadows.

It would be so convenient if we could just drop photos into this stream, in the mean time, check out:

Before       and      after

For those of you following along later, “Before” and “after” will probably only be available for a little while, after which they will get cleaned off my server to recover the space.

If you like “after”, it was opened in Adobe Camera Raw and the eye dropper was used to get white balance using her teeth.  Then the white balanced version was layered over the original, in Photoshop CS5, and a mask was used to keep the original background and the white balanced girl.  On the new layer, some blemishes were cleaned up with the band-aid tool.  Then some sharpening was applied but the blur tool was used to take some luminance off the background.  It was converted back to 8 bits and saved.

If I were starting with the raw file, I would check the lens correction check boxes, perhaps add some noise smoothing, adjust white balance, look at highlights and shadows and perhaps adjust Exposure, Recovery and Fill Light, and straighten the image if needed.  Then pop it into Photoshop to clean up any blemishes, crop, resize, sharpen.  Except for the blemishes part, it only takes a few minutes.  Skin can take a bit longer depending on what needs to be done.

You can shoot a grey card or use an Expo-disc to set custom white balance, then that white balance will come into DPP or ACR with the file and your white balance will already be correct.  Or, the lazy way I usually use, shoot in auto white balance and pick a neutral object to set white balance with the eye dropper tool.  If you are shooting in changing light or only taking a shot or two, this method works well.  If you are shooting a lot of images in the same light, setting white balance in the camera will give a faster result with uniform white balance, which you might prefer if you are going to print 50 shots for a wedding album.

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The link says SarahsPics but the page says Dart’s Pics?  I’m not sure if I’m in the right page or not.

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I think I prefer 28 to 1, probably has something to do with my general preference for a hard lens.  The steel building in 24 & 24 makes a good backdrop.

Keep shooting!

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It’s a risk.  It could be awesome, or it could be worth every penny paid.  Probably somewhere in between.

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Thank you.

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I just need glasses to read (aging sucks!), so I have no experience with contacts.

The LCD is great for shots that are really close to the ground or way over your head, either arm’s length or at the end of a monopod.  Sometimes it is also useful for macro work.  Grip is important.  If you can’t brace the camera against your face, it should be on a tripod.  You can’t hold a point & shoot still at arm’s length while trying to compose , focus and shoot.  It is almost impossible with a dSLR.  On a tripod, the only drawback to the LCD is short battery life.  It is a good solution for landscapes facing the sun; it keeps your retina from being damaged by the focused sunlight in the viewfinder.  If you fry the sensor or the shutter, you can always get another camera.

Don’t trust the LCD when reviewing photos.  It is great for ensuring everyone had their eyes open, or that the person who dodged in front of you just as you released the shutter was either slightly early or late and is not in the photo — or that you have to take another one.  For gauging exposure, learn to read a histogram.

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Focal length, aperture and distance to subject all affect depth of field.  We know from your post the focal length is 50 mm and aperture is f/1.2.  At 10 feet, depth of field is .86 feet or just over 10 inches.  At 5 feet, depth of field is .21 feet or just over 2 1/2 inches.  I suppose the good news is your 7D has an APS-C sensor so you are apt to be further away from your subject than if you had a full frame body.

Time to get out your tripod and tape measure.  Mount the camera a couple of feet from the floor, level.  Stretch out the tape measure in front of it.  Stand a book beside the tape measure to act as a target.  Set the aperture to f/1.2.  Take shots focusing on the book as you move the book from a couple of feet from the camera, a foot at a time, to about fifteen feet.  Look at the tape measure in your photos, to see the depth of field.  Let us know what you discover.

 

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“@MBC – that brings up a question – is there any way to “lock down” the diopter once you have it right?  It drives me crazy sometimes . . . .”

As browneyedgirl89 already said, the diopter is that tiny wheel… On a few bodies like the Canon 1D, the diopter is hidden behind the viewfinder bezel.  You take the bezel off, adjust to suit and put the bezel back on.  This effectively locks it since it is completely covered and almost impossible to accidentally move.  On other bodies it is exposed and seems to move every time you touch the camera.  Checking that the grid lines, meter, shutter and aperture numbers, etc. are all sharp is the most effective way I have found to ensure focus. In the days of manual focus lenses and film bodies, there was a split prism in the viewfinder to aid focus, that seems to have been dropped when auto-focus arrived.

If your eyes are outside “normal” vision, you may be able to purchase a diopter that fits over the viewfinder.  The rubber bumper comes off and a new one goes on, containing a lens.   I believe they work in conjunction with the regular diopter adjustment so you still get some range of adjustment.

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I’m not fond of tilted images.  Some people seem to like them and I know a few pros that recommend tilting the camera when they do seminars or blogs.  I know others that eliminate anything tilted from submissions to contests as the first step to choosing a winner.  If there is nothing in the image that can be used as a reference, tilting or not is not relevant, otherwise I generally prefer not tilted, although I have seen a few images that tilting probably helped.   When I looked at your images I wondered why so many were tilted.  One might be OK, even two perhaps, but three is too many.  John & Katie, 16 of 21, for instance… Nice looking chandelier, but odd looking when it should be hanging down and instead everything is listing.

The image of the children holding the frame would be a lot stronger if the couple kissing were also in focus.   Even the little girl does not seem sharp.  If that scene were shot with a really hard lens, then in post processing, another layer was given lens blur and masking was done so the children, frame and couple in the frame were sharp and everything else was blurred, I think it might look cool.  I just found another with the couple in focus and the children and frame blurred!  Same message as for the first image I found.  Try combining the two in Photoshop to see the effect of sharp children, frame and couple with everything else blurred.

Thomas and Sarah 1 of 13, almost the first thing I saw was that huge downspout drain at the bottom of the pillar.  If this was reportage, it would have to stay, but these are wedding photos, so I think it would be safe to take a few seconds and clone it out, there are lots of pixels available so it should be very fast to do.  Watch the shadows though.  This is one that may have been better with less depth of field to blur out the doors in the background?  In 2 of 13 the brides smile looks tentative and the bridesmaid behind her looks worried.   That picture might have been stronger if they were all in focus, as might 4 of 13, the guys.  In 4 of 13 the groom’s expression is better than the bride’s in 2 of 13, and he really stands out.  It is the better of those two photos.  In 11 of 13, there is that tilt again, it looks like a mistake.   The tilt is there in 12 of 13, and definitely it was on purpose, but why!  And we move to 13 of 13, where suddenly we are at a 24th of May or 4th of July party, or a birthday party or bar mitzvah?  It certainly looks like a totally different event!

 

Not sure how to identify the image.  “cary-wedding-photographer-09.jpg”, on your web page, B & W, might be a father, tight check pattern suit, grey hair and beard, looking out a window.  Except for the position of his right arm, I really like that photo.  I just can’t figure out why he has his arm up like he is going to block someone.  It does not seem that he is leaning on part of the window and I doubt there is a latch to open a door at the height his hand is.

 

In the engagement photos, of the guy in a green shirt, I like the “Danger” signs!  I think I would have removed them with Photoshop.

I would bury the photo (engagements/11w.jpg) of the black couple on the red chairs where the only thing in focus is the foreground weeds.

Why, when the guy is already a head taller than the girl in the white dress and blue jeans, would you pose them with her standing down slope from him for a kiss, it looks awkward.   If they were standing in opposite positions, it would be easier to kiss and it would look more natural.

Enough of that.  “cary-wedding-photographer-07.jpg”, the B & W with 3 bridesmaids looking over the fence and the bride turning back to look at the camera is nice.   It would also work well with a softer background.    “cary-wedding-photographer-17.jpg”, black bride looking at new husband, they fill the frame, I like that one.

 

 

 

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We have not looked at 4 CD’s or DVD’s worth of images.  The ones at the link look reasonably in focus, although some look like post processing blur was added.  Facebook is not the place to judge the finer points of image quality.  Most digital cameras have a low pass filter over the sensor.  Even if focus is perfect, the images do not appear that sharp until sharpening has been applied during post processing.  Post processing can take a fair image and make it look good.  It can take a good image and make it look great.  Of course, if not done well, it can take a good image and make it look bad.  The same page has some children’s images and another wedding.  They don’t inspire me but they are not offensive either.  If you got the original images, see if you can find a good retoucher to edit the ones you like best.

Letting the camera do most of the work sounds good to me.  I let my cameras do a lot of the work too.  Cameras have a lot of manual options:  manual exposure, manual flash, manual focus.  They also have a lot of automated functions, and you can mix and match.  Auto-focus can focus faster and more accurately than I can at least 99% of the time, so I use auto-focus a lot.  I use manual focus for macro work and when I am shooting through and the auto-focus is confused by the nearer objects.  The rest of the time auto-focus can do a better job than I can so I configure it and let it do its thing.

Manual exposure is a similar sort of thing.  I use it mostly when using flash, or when I know I want something the camera’s metering was not designed to provide.  The rest of the time, I mostly use aperture priority and just set the aperture and ISO.  Shutter speed can take care of itself.  I can see shutter speed in the viewfinder so if it is way off where I think it should be, I take control, otherwise I let the camera do it.  If you shoot manual exposure and just zero the meter every shot, you might as well let the camera do it, because it can do it faster than you can.  Save manual mode for the shots that need it.

Manual flash is similar too.  When driving studio strobes, manual prevents the pre-flash from triggering the strobes.  But, when doing a single on camera flash image, ETTL is just fine, the camera can work out the details.

In summary, manual mode has its place but the more automated modes are also very good and offer a lot of adjustment possibilities through exposure compensation and flash compensation, so anyone who only shoots in manual mode is wasting the potential provided by carrying around a camera with as much computing power as a notebook computer and is working harder than necessary.

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As has been pointed out, we still don’t know what the whole deal was.  However, I was at a wedding workshop this summer and the least expensive photographer there charged $1500 because they lived in a very rural part of the province and they felt it was all their customers could afford.  Their booking deposit was $150, and all of their fee had to be paid by the wedding day.  The other photographers also expected to be paid by the wedding day but they had higher fees and booking deposits.  The person who put on the workshop started several years ago and charged $2000 for the first half dozen weddings, then raised her rates.

The hamburger analogy is not too bad.   You are lucky if you get what you pay for and if you are paying 10% or less it is not reasonable to expect top quality.  The photos are not wonderful, but they are not as bad as many we have all seen.  Unless the photographer was holding himself/herself out as an experienced wedding photographer, I think you got a reasonable result for $150.

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