[ebi]

it’s not arrogance and disdain for everyone, just bad photographs. the photograph above is poorly composed, badly comped and horribly shot. The idea is cute, not conceptual. OP wanted to know what we thought. I’m but one opinion. While all of your opinions are  trying to help him improve this image technically they distract from the most important problem – you cannot polish a turd. The idea is not clever. Do something else and stop wasting your time. I’ll try to be a more detailed asshole from now on.

[ebi]

iliketag, it’s dumb. stop being a whiny little bitch.

[ebi]

wow, so you bring an additional photographer for $500 all in?

I’m not a wedding photographer, but i have shot weddings. I’ve shot two. One was for a friend (i’ll never do that again) and the other was for someone who was a big fan of my style of work. I didn’t want to do it but i also didn’t want to say no. So I quoted her an insane number. Unfortunately she didn’t even blink.  I hired a second shooter who had shot weddings. It was stressful and frustrating and i thought i’d completely fucked up her wedding photos. To this day, I still get calls from ppl she refers me too. And I turn down every one. You cannot pay me enough to do them…maybe if the economy goes to shit again…who knows.

Anyways, how many weddings have you done? have you fucked any of them up yet? You probably won’t if you keep things very controlled with only what you are comfortable with. Hire an assistant that has a lot of experience to cover your ass. They will probably hate you b/c they know more than you do, but if they could have gotten the job, they would have, not you.  Make them teach you shit. But honestly your CODB is probably higher than your profit, so i’d just stop for now.

[ebi]

@iliketag – it’s not interesting is simply that. if a photo is not interesting, then what is it? how can I tell someone how to take an interesting photo. It would be easier for me to explain how to make an image not flat. I don’t feel like doing either.

[ebi]

the critique was: Flat images, weird exposure things going on. I’m not even certain she knows how to use her camera

http://www.karenleighphotography.com/p216023233/h4df36#h56f53f82

http://www.karenleighphotography.com/p216023233/h4df36#h59dc9e7e

http://www.karenleighphotography.com/p216023233/h4df36#h625aa7ce

http://www.karenleighphotography.com/p216023233/h5c56cf2e#h5c56cf2e

She put some images back up and I’m glad she did. By bringing down the number of images she looks like a better photographer.  I think overall, there is a better way to present these images but the subject of website functionality is a completely separate one.

HDR sunflower shot – wacky wide and not very natural looking. why is it your first image and the first impression you want to make?
leaves shot – bad image. not interesting. get rid of it.
baby shot – overly lit in the front, not very lit in the back. fall off too much or not enough. i see lots of weird distracting shapes and colors.
backlit baby tub shot. cute, don’t hate it. parents love that shit. leave it in.
christmas baby double spread – cute shot. could have better facial expression but babies are hard so whatevs. remove your reflection from the bulb in the front.
pumpkin baby – bad color balance, styling could be better.
bokeh baby – bad contrast, cute kid
truck shot – poorly crafted, bad subjects, would be better without the cube truck behind the other truck.
cat shot  on white, not that great.
Baby turtle shot – what are you anne geddes now? Her pictures are not that interesting and i really don’t like it when ppl try to emulate her work.Other than that, it’s fine.
mom walking with child – flat, bad contrast, bad color kid looks ok, moms ass looks fat (my apologies if this is a self portrait). Not really a good photo.
red head dancer – i think she looks beautiful. i love the angle, and the smile . this should be the first impression people have of you. A little brighter more contrast, work on the color temperature. Do you have it wider? Are you cropping? If you have more, maybe play with different cropping.
dandelion baby – flat,weird technical thing going on here. not really a good image overall
same with the next photo. And also this is a good time to talk about consistency. Look at this photo and the one before. Notice the color temperature is completely different? Fix that. All we see is moms nose. We need to see more of mom.
cats – alright, whatever. i like cats. this is fine
blue baby – fine
boot baby – other ppl like this, i don’t really care for it, but whatever. i guess its fine.
random flower shot. no.
dandelion baby – flare doesnt’ make sense. not a great shot.
cat composite? what happened? photoshop filter? please step away from the filters…
violin girl – not a great model. delete.
sunflower girl – not a great model. delete. The profile shot makes her look very busty. probably not a good thing.
Candace Phelps – I actually like the light on this one. technically it looks like you know what you are doing.
And this brings me to another point. This girl looks boring. When shooting real people, especially senior portraits, I like to think of them as environmental portraits. So the standard poses are just boring. You can really set yourself apart by thinking outside the box. Every few years I have a cousin graduate from high school and so every few years, one kid has entirely different and creative senior portraits b/c all the rest of them get them done at the same place with the same backgrounds and the same boring poses. You’ll snag a ton of business if you can do this. Do fun and stupid stuff, regardless if it works or not. The ones I did this year where with a girl who had no personality.  Her answer to everything was “I don’t know”. In every photo she looks exactly the same. I feel that Candace does as well. That may be something you can fix, it may not be. It all depends. With my cousin, who i’ve known all her life, i wasn’t able too. I don’t fail that often, but I did this time. I also shot my male cousin who had far more energy and was way less meek and apathetic. His shots turned out much better.
boy with glasses and his girlfriend – were these engagement shots? ugh. too young to get married. weird angle, not a good shot.
Batman boy – weird angle, not a good shot.

Overall, you are still all over the place. You need to organize images better so that they flow well from one photo to the next. The nature stuff is the least important, unless it fits with a story. It’s not selling you on anything, so its best to just discard it if it doesn’t serve a purpose. You can also put it elsewhere, like on a blog or personal site somewhere. just not in the images that are to represent who you are as a professional photographer.

So yeah, you edited immensely and it completely changed the perception of you as a photographer. It’s amazing what editing can do. We all make bad photographs. We just don’t let other people see the bad. only the good. Our ability to be objective is what makes the difference.

[ebi]

I find all this lens talk so pedantic. IRL we usually don’t shoot with anything above a 120. For still life its typically a 120 Macro Hasselblad lens, maybe sometimes the 150 if we really want to compress the background but rarely. We typically stay away from zooms on medium format systems. It seems you all are DSLR shooters. I use the canon for DSLR. And my go to lens is a Leica 90mm f/2.8 Tele-Elmarit-M. I use to use the 100 macro lens but i cannot stand the falloff at f/8 or 5.6. So I tried out this leitz lens and I find it far better for a more natural fall off. When i’m moving around I’ll roll with 35 1.4L, 50 1.2L, and 100 f2.8L macro. When I’m lazy i’ll use a zoom – usually a 24-70 L. The 135 is fine. I can’t stand the 70-200. It’s too big to carry around. Maybe if you are a wildlife photographer.  I could care less about bokeh. It’s unimportant. I think some of these technical things can be a little distracting for photographers and take them away from the more important task of taking beautiful photographs. Coming up as an assistant, I’d often ask photographers what camera they liked using. My favorite answer was “Whatever my assistant hands me”.

[ebi]

pull some swipes for reference for light that you want to emulate. post to us and we may be able to tell you how to achieve that light.

[ebi]

unlikely properly exposed, even before processing. The camera left eye goes so dark. Light source is too small and not enough power and positioned in the wrong place. You should play around with more natural light if you can’t afford studio strobes. Studio lighting is fun but it’s typically not done with continuous light.

[ebi]

it’s not used in magazines much at all. it’s surrealistic and not appealing. There are some photographers that use it to varying results. Gary Land tends to overdo it sometimes, but he’s successful nonetheless: http://www.garylandphotography.com/  But his work is very commercial/advertising. You’d not see these in the pages of magazines (unless they were advertisements)

[ebi]

there is nothing wrong with reflections. it’s natural. You can do things to elongate, like put a V-FLat in front of your subject or make it smaller, using an umbrella. But this light is so low and way too frontal and over exposed.

[ebi]

1) the guy with the sunglasses – This is why professionals shoot in all-black studios.

no we do not. You might be thinking of product photographers who shoot reflective things and even still we tend to build black around the object.

An all black studio? That’s just crazy talk.

[ebi]

Lighting is subjective so I can not help you if I don’t know what you want. Don’t assume that I’ve come here to berate you. If I wanted to do that, I would have done it already. And if I wanted to tell you how I’d light this kid, then I would have offered up my opinions of back lights and key lights and fill lights, what have you. But instead, i decided it would be better to ask you what you want, because from what I can see you haven’t any clue what you are doing and you probably don’t even know what you want. So think about that instead of getting all worried about butt hurt.

[ebi]

HDR is stupid. Instead, shoot at dusk and take beautiful shots the way nature intended things to look. You don’t see HDR work in magazines because it’s hokey and gimmicky.

[ebi]

what do i think?

It’s absolute shit from top to bottom.

Advice?

Do something else beside photography. You belong on the front page.

[ebi]

no. stop! don’t do that.

[Author]

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