[ebi]

a flash with a diffuser pointed at the ceiling is just a fill light that fills in the room and dark shadows on the subject. it’s a very flat light when pointed at the ceiling. The on camera flash means the light will be very frontal with little shadow. So it sounds like very flat, but evenly lit photos.

Sounds like the assistant isn’t really in the know about what the photographer is making on this job. His shot at the end sounds super cheesy and stupid.

[ebi]

i hope that it wakes you up from the delusion that you think it’s good. I cannot make you a good photographer. You so miss the mark with these four images and if you sent this anywhere else, you would just get ignored. Be grateful that someone is willing to offer you the cold hard truth instead of nothing at all.

Go look at some magazines and start over.

[ebi]

Sorry Maryah, but I call it as I see it. I cannot give you much critique except to say that if these are the only four images you have…or if these are your very best, then start over.

[ebi]

oh that poor girl…you totally messed up her senior portraits. I hope you didn’t charge her for those. If you did, then shame on you! You got your first camera when you were seven? So now, you are what, like 8? So, I guess i have to give some constructive criticism now or otherwise the rest of the people in here who are just being nice will get mad at me.

First off, stop charging ppl for photos, you aren’t ready for that. And if you have to bring paid work in here for critique you are obviously lost.

– she’s too posey posey. Loosen her up a little bit. talk to her, make her relax. Tell her to keep it all very natural and light.
– the smiles suck. Have her do a soft smile or catch a real moment when she’s smiling.
– photos need to be brighter (on the ones that aren’t overexposed, i mean) and you need to color balance.
– shoot from a higher angle – all that under the chin stuff doesn’t look good.
-edit better. You’ve got way too many selects. I bet if you edited down to 2-3 images per look, you’d look less like someone who didn’t know what they were doing. throw out bad angles, bad moments/smiles and overexposed images, etc.

[ebi]

Perhaps the reason he doesn’t listen to your advice because your photos aren’t good either. In fact, his might even be slightly better than yours considering that in one out of every 30 frames he actually takes a shot that makes the girl look flattering. You’ve got none: Just pocohontas taking a shit and some bad vignettes. If I were you, I’d be less concerned about helping him improve his photography and work on improving your own first.  That is all I’ll really say about that since you didn’t ask for a critique on yours.

[ebi]

No I don’t actually mean writing a story, I mean create a series of images that tell a story. I look at a bunch of images of like the Uruguay set, and all i see is a bunch of cars and boats and roads, but it really doesn’t tell me anything about Uruguay. For all I know its some desolate place with old cars beat up cars. what about the restaurants, nightlife, people, other interesting sites. etc. Same with the other sets, lots of beautiful landscapes but it doesn’t really tell me what these South american countries are like. I’ve been to many of them: yes, they have beautiful vistas but they also have colorful people, customs, beautiful farms, stores, and restaurants and food. So think about the bigger picture overall.

Also not a fan of the film strip look on your images. They may be far more interesting without that.

[ebi]

not really all that interesting. A bunch of landscapes, but it would be better to tell a story with your photos, unless you want to just be a landscape photographer. You need to work on composition.  Like the laguna colorada shot could be great if it hadn’t been so tightly cropped and composed in such an odd way. It’s really a shame. Always better to leave yourself more room then crop later. Also if it hadn’t be retouched to death. You’ll need to learn how to darken the sky without leaving a halo on the horizon. I see it in almost all of the photos.

Too sharp, too contrasty, need a better camera for sure…

[ebi]

i’ve had good experiences and bad on set with celebrities. In most instances, it has been good. On the ones that are bad, there is typically a problem with production that creates inconveniences for them. But on a few occasions they just came on set for 5 minutes, knew nothing of the hours or days that went in to producing a shoot that they were only involved in for such a limited amount of time, and still acted like an ass. I just roll my eyes in those situations.

I’d say that you can’t always say one is better than the other. One is just better at getting and maintaining relationships with their clients for one reason or another. In a lot of situations, the photographer happens to be a really good host, takes the client out on the town,  gets them a reservation at some fancy new spot that they’ve been dying to try. Or just really digs in deep while kissing their ass. But generally someone who is fun and interesting to be around. Art directors are typically cooped up in offices all day and have boring lives. When I was working in fashion and traveling a lot, I was out to dinner with art directors and creative directors every night. Even when I was exhausted and didn’t want to. It really wasn’t up to me. Because if I wanted to be on that next trip to Bali, I had better not bore them on this trip.

In terms of lighting, they just use the same assistants over and over again, or just make sure they can get someone who follows vague direction really well. Essentially, you have to be able to look at a swipe and recreate the light.

[ebi]

“As for the brightness and cool tones that is what I like and pretty much my style. as we all know each photographer has their own style and what they like and brighter is just what I enjoy. we cant all be the same.”

There is a difference between someone’s style and not knowing what they are doing. Lets look at the shots of the girl with the braces, shall we? First off, I took the liberty of putting the all together side by side, and also I removed the watermark, which just goes to show that any idiot with 5 minutes and a cracked copy of photoshop could also do. You’ll notice variations in color from image to image. And not just in each look, but in each of your selects. In the first two, “the pixie setup” she goes from very pink to slightly green in the second image. Then in the backlit setup, she goes greener still to very yellow. Then she goes towards blue on the proverbial lay-on-your-belly-and-cross-your-legs-in-the-air-look or “the lolita pose”.

View post on imgur.com

So you are all over the place with color. If you want to call it a look, then pick one and go with it. Otherwise you are really no different than the fauxtog that puts his b&w variation next to the color one. Also, by overexposing, you are getting some blooming in the highlights.

[ebi]

best to look at your images again, fresh and with a clear head.

[ebi]

the nine photographs on your second main page, after i have to annoyingly click through the “enter site page” are a pretty good representation of what you do. You should make these change randomly with 9 other images. to get some variety.

seniors. some great portraits in here. But also a lot of bad. the overhead shot with the girl laying in the grass. she looks like she’s dying…get rid of it. some weird hand positions in a lot of these as well. try not to be so posey. these are real girls, not models. pull some of their personality out and try not to be so stiff. Why two shots of the girl with the headdress? Choose one and remove the other. I see you try to pop the eyes a bit in post. Don’t do that. If you want that look for real, put a white reflector closer to her.

maternity – first three shots are ok. although the last of the three, the girls looks surprised or something. but i like the background and the light. next few shots are ok, but get rid of the train tracks trailer trash shots. the girl with the tutu sitting on the bed..theres stuff going on in the background. a light switch? the bedframe? distracting. Horizontal pink bow belly close up. super noisy, get rid of it. Chica at the end. not a great shot.

newborns – nothing to hate here. except the closeup of the lips. that bothers me…Lead with the last shot, its the best one. Also, they are all starting to feel very much the same so you should maybe start looking for more props/backgrounds. it will get boring pretty quick.

boudour – sexy, but get rid of the cougars, the posey sunset shot, and the obvious out of focus images.

Families and portraits – way too much stuff. Edit down to your best work. get rid of everything else.

Studio work – you don’t need this section. Just combine the images with other galleries. In the ad world, it makes a difference if you shoot studio or natural light. But in your world, your clients won’t know the difference.  creepy web makeup photos have to go. the light is pretty though.

weddings…so you’ve only shot two weddings? Looks like the military wedding was more successful. You aren’t a wedding photographer after shooting two weddings. edit your images on this section. it’s too many and a lot are bad.

couples. You’ve only shot one couple? The images aren’t great.

About page – nice rack. your bio was TL;DR. But…nice rack.

And get rid of the watermark. It’s distracting and no one is stealing your tiny 72dpi images.

[ebi]

fashion is mostly bullshit. Most photographers don’t know what they are doing. I call them “good eye photographers”. They are the ones that schmooze the clients while 3 assistants do their work for them. They make an appearance on set to click the button a few times which makes it look like they really do deserve that really big paycheck. It’s a very appealing job!

I don’t see anything wrong with the cropping and angle of these images. It appears they are shot with a somewhat wide lens which creates a little bit of distortion. CC is right, the photographer is not concerned with anything other than how the girl or guy looks in the clothing. The clothing has to look really great. Which is why there is a stylist on set, getting in between frames and straightening things out to look nice. Like literally every chance she gets to do it. Hair and Makeup as well. No set designer for this as its a real space but probably a prop stylist who made things look better in the background. But often times we aren’t allowed to touch anything. Sometimes we can add things, but usually can’t touch anything. Been on many of these shoots. Production assistants galore. Lots of grunts to do things for us. the jobs typically go very smoothly. especially when you have celebrity talent on set. they don’t want to be there long so everything has to be thought out and planned before hand so they aren’t made to wait. Sometimes mistakes happen because we have to move so quickly. The issues get sorted out in post. sometimes not.

[ebi]

ugh..i hate seeing the b&w version with the color version. Just pick one and move on. I edit almost arbitrarily, moving through the images quickly. Mulling over details is a waste of time, for the most part. Sometimes you have to, but not most of the time. The worst is editing with indecisive art directors.

[ebi]

I agree that his take on professional is very true. Most professionals that I’ve worked with barely know how to use their camera or they don’t know how to light. Or both. They know what they like but that’s about it. I remember back when I first started in the business, I got hired to assist this 17 year old photographer who said I want it to look like this ad from the 1990’s. It was a Volkswagen ad. Can you do that? And I was like “I have no idea what you are talking about. Do you have a swipe?” He did not.

I did like some of the photos as well, but I started to question the veracity of the person doing the critiquing. A lot of common sense about what they did and didn’t like, save for a few images that I thought were clearly terrible that they liked. But it was just very obvious. Was the critique free? Because I felt like they were just too nice. I thought they should have emphasized more of a focus. Instead he mentions the newspaper thing. I’m guessing there isn’t a whole lot to offer in Chattanooga, TN.

I think you are right about the Carrol J Donoghue woman. She sounds like a nutcase. I will disregard the rape comment.  It’s just odd that it came up in a simple search for him.

[ebi]

See, I don’t find either of these photographers work that great. I think they each have a few strong images but not really what I would call great work. Brad seems cocky while receiving his critique and in searching what he’s up to now, I’ve found that:

a.) he hasn’t edited anything (didn’t listen to his critique at all). He has even more crap.
b.) he’s been accused of raping a girl during a photo shoot.

So I guess that answers the question of what he wants to do as a photographer.

Zacks work is very limited b/c his website is moving? yeah, i don’t get that. What I do see is not so great and I think he falls under the category of “those who can’t do, teach”. I found his critique to be about 27 minutes too long. I cannot believe they spent that much time looking through all those images to find just a few images that they liked. I was baffled by some of the ones they liked. Some of the others were liked b/c they were cute, which is great, if that is what you’re going for. Then to sum it all up Zack suggests he find a career as a newspaper photographer – you know, the career that has pretty much disappeared and pays nothing.  Hope Brad didn’t spend too much money on his critique. Might need it for his legal defense.

[Author]

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