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  • in reply to: Attitudes and Behavior on Social Media #10355
    nesgran
    Participant

    I think it certainly does hurt their business, but not nearly enough. I doubt that many people actually check through facebook when they are looking for a photographer for their wedding/bar mitzvah/graduation/etc. However, if you have a bad attitude on there and are trying to get a job as a second shooter I doubt any real tog would hire them. I think that photographers are on average a bit older than many others who use social media and have probably not quite realised the difference between anonymous forum trolling (which tech interested people have been doing since the dawn of the internet) and being outright nasty when your name and company is attached to the comments. Also never forget that being able to get good shots don’t necessarily translate into being a nice human being.

    As for gear, that is always a tricky one. Most pros and some keen amateurs have spent more money on light stands than the average person will spend on their DSLR which warps perceptions a bit. The problem is when people aren’t realising how good gear is for its price, this holds true for some gear like the canon kit 18-55 IS and 55-250 IS lenses. Stopped down a bit they are very sharp and even wide open aren’t bad but only if you qualify it with “for what they cost”. It completely depends on the group you are talking to, one forum I frequent the canon 24-105L is one of the best lenses for most people out there yet on the next forum the 24-105L is a decent enough lens but not that many would actually use one because it isn’t good enough.

    in reply to: Fauxtogs who should end up on the main page… #10312
    nesgran
    Participant

    Re the other Roxanne, she isn’t bad I think but rather a bit meh. I certainly wouldn’t hire her for a wedding since she mostly does contrived poses is awful light. Hiring a wedding photographer the photos need to scream “I am bloody good” whereas hers scream “I’m trying but I’m not quite sure what I’m doing”

    I do think she managed pretty well with some of the after party shots and the fish eye suited the atmosphere, for a few shots at least before the novelty wears off. I don’t quite understand the B &W alternations though. It doesn’t look vastly oversaturated but I think she is desperately trying to make up for really uninteresting light and it all falls flat. One thing to consider: I’m assuming a number of us are sitting on wide gamut monitors and if you aren’t using a colour managed browser like firefox or opera, colours will often look very saturated.

    It is a bit odd though. I actually bothered going to all the trouble of registering at the knot after writing the first half of this post to see her portfolio there. That blows her FB shots out of the water by a wide margin. They actually look good but it is hard to see all of them properly as they are a very mixed variety of sizes. I wonder if she is a mediocre tog that occasionally gets a good shot or whether she is a good tog that doesn’t have any concept of selecting good shots to stick up on facebook. The ones in her portfolio and farther back have interesting off camera lighting, good ambient light, interesting poses etc whereas the recent stuff she’s posted I could have had my local butcher do as well. It is all very weird.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    in reply to: Inappropriate album title #10310
    nesgran
    Participant

    I wouldn’t be too bothered with it is as we don’t know the whole story behind it. Is her stage name sexy sadie maybe? But then I’m not american and don’t understand all this taking offence to things like this.

    Far more worrying though, this is a man who uses a square vignette and no one has commented on this atrocity? Shame really, most of his shots actually look pretty ok if it wasn’t for all of his horrible editing. I bet most of the disasters there looked better sooc.

     

     

    in reply to: Lenses (I'm talking Canon but feel free to share) #10238
    nesgran
    Participant

    both the 100L and 180L are stellar lenses. The “best” for macro is the 180 as you get a longer working distance, problem is however it is not hand holdable. If you’re happy to use a tripod and preferably a macro rail for focus stacking by all means, you will not be disappointed. If you have space it works really well for portraits as well. The 100L has the advantage of shorter focal length combined with IS making it reasonable to hand hold for macro work but you are much more likely to scare away small critters and having to sort out more light as standing closer you may well end up blocking natural light.

    in reply to: Fauxtogs who should end up on the main page… #10237
    nesgran
    Participant
    in reply to: This is SO worth the read. #10236
    nesgran
    Participant

    wow, that was a new level of faux that

    in reply to: Fauxtog spottings in the wild! #10202
    nesgran
    Participant

    I was at a wine fair here in London a couple of weekends ago and there were a number of people with press passes there. First was a middle aged lady who went round shooting at f13 indoors without a tripod on a mid range nikon with the 18-105 lens. Other great things were the use of pop up flash but only for some shots and particularly for the shots where she tried to capture the entire hall it was held in. She also tried to use manual focus without turning the af off on the camera and the lens isn’t ftm anyway.

    Next was a guy who pulled up a gripped 5d mkII which looked like a good start, the 50mm 1.8 wouldn’t have been my first choice but it is  a good lens for the price at least. He then proceeded to be in the way of everyone for the next 15 minutes as he continued walking around the barbecue shooting the food in a really awkward way as he kept turning the camera the wrong way which seems silly given that there a separate shutter button on the grip for vertical shooting. He was probably less faux than the other woman but still, he was far more annoying.

     

     

     

    in reply to: Here Goes Nothing… Critique (+ Intro) #10118
    nesgran
    Participant

    A couple of things, do not go into business with your friends. I got seasick from looking at the first and bored looking at the second.  As a purely professional thing it isn’t great to bad mouth your friends, even if they are near fauxtog level.

    As for your actual photos, they look good, mostly. You have a couple of posed shots of more than one person where one person is blurry. You have chopped a fair few people in half, like the pic of the three cheerleaders which is guilty of both of the above.  There is the odd white balance problem and lighting could have been better in the sports shots though that is obviously hard to control but other than that there isn’t much to nitpick on. What you need is a better photographer than I am to give you proper critiques and I suspect the best way for you to get that would be to get a job as an assistant to a good photographer. You probably need to narrow down a little what you want to shoot (events, sports, studio?) and work from there. One thing though is that there isn’t a lot of creativity in the shots. They are sound but they are more of a documenting type (which is fine) but it depends on where you want to go from there.

    It is obvious you have good gear and know how to use it well. Some of those shots I wouldn’t have included because of pure technical problems. I wouldn’t call you a fauxtog even if you started charging people, I however think you’d benefit from being taken on by someone who is skilled and interested in passing on their knowledge. You should probably even consider taking more courses in photography at a higher level.

    I am very sorry for the loss of your friend, she sounds like a great person and photographer.

    in reply to: So… Craigslist… #10092
    nesgran
    Participant

    A couple of 4×6 or 5×7 aren’t going to cost much for you and would be nice for people who volunteer their time for your training. If they want bigger prints by all means charge them what the prints cost to get done. I would say though that you should use a professional quality printer which means five 4×6 are going to be a couple of dollars. Sending them edited lowish res pictures would also be a nice touch, 1536×1024 is a good size that is big enough for viewing on full screen on a computer and certainly big enough for facebook. Oh, and add a nice little watermark on good shots so if someone likes your pictures they can find you.

    If someone then wants to give change for gas it wouldn’t be wrong to accept it I think. See it as donations

     

     

    in reply to: Origin Stories #10088
    nesgran
    Participant

    I got my first P&S (Canon I think) when I was about 7 from my dad and started shooting everything. Sure the photos were not good but then when I was about 15 I bought my first SLR which was a Canon 300V. A couple of thousand shots later through that later I borrowed my dad’s old work camera for durability and better lens reasons while I was in the military, a Pentax KX and from there things really took off. Six months later I got my first digital camera, a Canon 350D which was so much easier to learn with as you got that instant feedback. Then things continued spiralling and thousands upon thousands of shots have been taken over the years since and it was indeed sad when that 350D finally died, at least it got got off a great final shot of two of my friends on the first dance at their wedding.

    nesgran
    Participant

    I’ll comment on broad categories as you have a lot of shots in there. Some things however I can say about all of them, don’t put blurry shots up there. A couple of random shots seem to be out of focus like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/annelisegrace/8412296265/sizes/k/in/photostream/ Just remove them as they drag down the rest of your shots and look at your shots much closer if they aren’t completely crisp. The next technical thing is your use of negative space that isn’t ideal, a number of your photos you have the negative space on the wrong side and often it ends up looking wrong. Also pulling off portraits where the subject is smack bang in the middle of the frame is difficult, a few of your shots it works but most it doesn’t. The rule of thirds works for a reason. There’s also a number of badly underexposed shots like this http://www.flickr.com/photos/annelisegrace/6118913174/ . There’s also a number of dismembered limbs floating about in your shots or you’ve chopped people off, either crop or clone stamp them out. I’m not sure what your aspirations are but from what looked like a business brochure I’m guessing you want to get paid for doing this.

    Your portraits don’t pop. One or two you can use the lens flare low contrast look but the rest you need to think about your lighting. You are not using the natural light well enough to make them stand out and since you aren’t making up for it with off camera lights either the portraits look arty enough but don’t look good. In fact the oof shot I linked shows this well. You aren’t getting your subjects to stand out particularly from the back ground and because of the sun looking like it is at high noon you have a lot of shadows which shouldn’t be there like raccoon eyes and under chins. Other portraits the faces of people are dark and there is no interesting light play. It is an interesting shot but the lighting simply doesn’t work. This one http://www.flickr.com/photos/annelisegrace/8182885088/ you have got half the light already in there from the setting (?) sun giving you a nice rim light in the hair. There is however nothing to bring the face out of the wall and background which a single speedlight off camera with a softbox would do. The branches is not a good touch either and the eyes aren’t completely sharp.

    I think the single thing that most will improve your portraits is a basic understanding of off camera lighting, a speedlight or two and some other accessories. Shots like this one http://www.flickr.com/photos/annelisegrace/8576946872/ you are having a light contest with the sun and unless you have enough oomph in your light setup it will look bad. This shot could indeed have been a good shot if the subject hadn’t been completely dark. Read through the strobist.com lighting 101, it will help you immensely.

     

    Your stage shots suffer a little bit from the same, when the subject or at least the face isn’t lit up the photo most likely won’t be a good one, this one should have gone into the bin straight away http://www.flickr.com/photos/annelisegrace/6808361940/. A little bit of flare in a shot may look good or if the flare works together with the subject but if the flare is so severe it overpowers the contrast in the shot (which is naturally very high contrast) it doesn’t look good like in this http://www.flickr.com/photos/annelisegrace/8575824807/ That shot you could have used the blue light in the background as a rim light if you’d taken a step or two to the left and let the light shining on his face act as a main light making him pop a lot. You could probably bump your ISO a bit to get a better shutter speed, 1/60 isn’t great for a moving subject.

    Your black and white shots suffer from a slightly too low contrast in general, when you convert a digital shot to b&w you generally need to add more contrast.

    You need to a be a little more selective in your selection of shots if you intend to use the flickr as a portfolio and put less of the random shots up.

    Keep shooting though, you have a good enough foundation to stand on but certain areas you are deficient, mainly in the use of light in your shots. I think it looks worse because you aren’t selective enough either bringing the average quality down. For $150 you could get yourself a yongnou flash, a pair of radio triggers, a light stand and a cheap softbox or umbrella. Build yourself a reflector from some tinfoil and cardboard and you have a great start for lighting up your subjects.

     

     

     

     

    in reply to: I Like This Warning…… #10021
    nesgran
    Participant

    She’s been a bit sneaky, you can hardly see one of the letters in the website at the bottom of her pictures which means you can’t easily find it. After a bit of close peering this was the site http://www.picturesbychell.webs.com/

     

    Serious fauxtog warning. Serious overexposure problems, selective colouring, bad masking, a grey baby in a picture otherwise in colour, some kind of weird frame blur thing going on, oof shots, hideous colour temperature problems, glowing highlights and a couple of really low res images. In fact, this is a fauxtog if I ever saw one.

    in reply to: They can't take friendly competition! #10009
    nesgran
    Participant

    It must be getting a little soul destroying if someone who works as a tog comes along and scoops up a lot of prizes year after year, regardless of whether your photos are better than theirs.

     

    As for the pro distinction, try getting a press pass without earning the majority of your work through photography. I think there is a merit in judging people who charge for photography as pros however I’d be hard pushed to think of someone who only gets a part of their income through photography as a true professional.

    in reply to: Let's Talk Lenses! #9986
    nesgran
    Participant

    The 85 f1.8 is  a good lens as well for the money, not as cheap as the plastic 50 but far better build quality and much nicer bokeh. The 50 uses six straight aperture blades which means as soon as you stop down a little bokeh balls become hexagons and the bokeh is jittery. the 85 on a crop also gives a more flattering compression. That said, there is no reason why both shouldn’t have a place in your camera bag.

    If you are working out of a studio with proper lights the canon 24-105L is also a good lens, very sharp once stopped down to f8 and it has portrait friendly focal lengths. Because it is a kit lens with 5D and 6Ds there’s loads of them around at reasonable prices yet it is still a pro grade lens with weather sealing, proper ultrasonic motor, image stabiliser and a very good build quality.

    Cameraclicker, I’m going to disagree with you saying that it doesn’t affect DOF. Try punching some numbers into a dof calculator and you’ll see what I mean.

     

     

    in reply to: Got Emailed by a Faux about Copyright Laws! #9985
    nesgran
    Participant

    It almost looks like they were shooting film for some of the shots, agfa 200 cheapo film in fact.

Viewing 15 posts - 436 through 450 (of 457 total)