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Viewing 15 posts - 46 through 60 (of 457 total)
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  • in reply to: Learning, curious to see how I'm doing #21700
    nesgran
    Participant

    most flashes will have a bounce card built in so they will look the business.

    Try to get used to handling a big camera, big lens and big flash combo as you will be grateful for it by the end of the evening. Most of the weight should be on your left hand with the right hand really only offering balance. If you don’t do this your wrists will hurt. You need to be holding on to the lens though instead of the flash as how else are you going to work the lens? With the lens in portrait position I generally angle it to bounce off the ceiling however if you can bounce off walls that generally gives a better quality of light as it comes from the side.

    Don’t worry about the yongnuo flashes, they are good things and while they probably aren’t as reliable as the canikon equivalent you can fit three in your bag and still have money left over for batteries (sanyo eneloops is my suggestion). I have several YN flashes myself. A TTL flash for events is a much better idea though and never forget you very rarely want it pointing straight at people.

    Good luck, it sounds like you have an excellent friend to help you out with this

    in reply to: Tell me what you think about my wedding photos? #21417
    nesgran
    Participant

    Over all I like them but they are badly tilted and it doesn’t look good. The lightroom cropping tool is fantastic for those kinds of adjustments.

    The second major problem is that your skin tones are wonky. You have one shot with decent skin tone which is the one where the bride and groom are leaning into each other. In the rest he looks like he died a couple of days ago.

    You editing isn’t consistent which is fine as long as the shots that look the same (i.e. sharp with rich contrast or the low contrast washed out) are kept in the same album. The washed out shots are also less likely to age well.

    These things basically boil down to your editing and can be fixed. They look nice though and don’t look out of place in Europe either.

    in reply to: Tell me what you think of these. #21069
    nesgran
    Participant

    Here’s a little inspiration for pet photos that stand out (bear in mind these are shot on digital medium format so that utter sharpness is difficult to replicate: http://www.marklaita.com/animals.php

    The photos are a good start but they are somewhat lacking, mainly in the light department. The tablecloth isn’t doing them any favours and I’d suggest either polished black or white or putting them on foamboard with foam board as a background.

    in reply to: How much do you pay for advertising? #21014
    nesgran
    Participant

    Many support groups will post some kind of news letter, try to get advertising in that as it will be a lot more focused than a random ad in the newspaper. It will also help the organisation getting some revenue to support their newsletter. You are doing niche work and need niche advertising.

    in reply to: How am I doing? Critiques/advice welcome #20986
    nesgran
    Participant

    I mostly looked at your flickr as your own website was too slow to load. Your latest shots are really good and you can see a great progression from your first flickr photos to your latest.

    A couple of things that I thought looking at it:
    Your black and whites don’t make any of your photos better. They look great in colour and the conversion just isn’t doing it for me.
    Your 70-200 creates a pretty nervous bokeh in the forest surroundings but so does your 85/1.8. Take on some paying customers and put some money in the bank account before buying whichever is the go to portrait prime lens for Nikon. You deserve it.
    With the super shallow depth of field there was one or two shots that aren’t completely in focus. One for example, blond girl with glasses her lips are in perfect focus but her eyes are a bit soft.

    I wouldn’t dismiss weddings too easily. You can make it into what you want. Check out Moshe Zusman for example, his wedding photos don’t look far off what you are doing but it means he has a regular income which is not to be sniffed at while trying to learn. Being a good photographer is a very small part of being a working photographer and learning that side of things is only going to help you. It may be a temporary thing for a couple of years while you build a business or you might find that you need that income to keep you going and not having to take a second job flipping burgers.

    in reply to: Let's get critical up in here #20931
    nesgran
    Participant

    Just pick up an old SLR in a charity shop. I picked up a Pentax MX with a 50/1.7 lens for £15 the other day, new batteries for a couple of quid and a roll of Kodak BW400CN or Ilford 400 XP2 that goes through the standard lab C41 process. It is worth a try to see what “real” B&W can do. Total outlay around £30 and you get 36 prints from it. I’m not a big fan of digital black and white conversions as they never seem to really have to punch that film B&W does but each to their own.

    Are there other B&W cameras other than the Leica? Anyway, to get B&W to work you need a lot of contrast naturally in the picture, it is easier with people than with landscapes. To get more punch in the phots try fiddling with the white balance before converting to black and white, you can get it ridiculously off and get the conversions to look better. In the olden days you’d use green filters for example to help with skin tones and orange filters to get clouds to appear. Experiment! Some extra grain might even help set the mood.

    in reply to: Let's get critical up in here #20777
    nesgran
    Participant

    A couple of quick pointers. The photos for the most part look good but you have some issues. Your B&W conversions add nothing, get rid of them. With super shallow depth of field, make sure your focus is on the eyes and not elsewhere. Your colours are inconsistent within the shoots, make sure they all look the same otherwise it will look off when put them in an album.

    Finally, STAY OFF TRAIN TRACKS! The ones you’ve used are active tracks which means it is both trespassing and bloody dangerous.

    in reply to: Please kill the garbage! #20632
    nesgran
    Participant

    The irony is overwhelming

    in reply to: Need some direction/CC #20535
    nesgran
    Participant

    the slowest shutter speed will be 1/70th when zoomed wide and 1/300 when zoomed long

    I’d say you probably want to double that, especially seeing as it is a crop sensor. The digital cameras of today are pretty brutal when it comes to sharpness due to the number of megapixels even though the 50D only has 15. Unless you have fantastically steady hands 2x times the focal length is not unreasonable for full frame cameras to exploit all the resolution there is.

    in reply to: It's been a long time #20426
    nesgran
    Participant

    I saw a pretty good lecture on youtube by Moshe Zusman, well worth seeing. I think it was a B&H one.

    Otherwise there are many a book on the subject, have a browse of Amazon and you can usually see the first few pages to make your mind up whether it looks good or not.

    in reply to: Fauxtogs who should end up on the main page… #20416
    nesgran
    Participant

    because nothing is as sexy as tucking whatever that piece of fabric should be called in to your fat rolls, great posing

    in reply to: Fauxtogs who should end up on the main page… #20312
    nesgran
    Participant

    the panoramics themselves weren’t bad but “holy HDR Batman!” springs to mind

    in reply to: Can I have some CC please. #20137
    nesgran
    Participant

    Your link is broken, it only leads to my own flickr

    in reply to: How do these fauxs get so much business?!?! #20117
    nesgran
    Participant

    I see your point nesgran but am not so sure. I get that ‘pro’ camera’s are much more readily available and attainable nowadays. But in the past it wasn’t just the well off who could maintain photography as a hobby or profession. My dad was a photographer and was definitely not from a well off back ground.

    But the barriers for entry are much lower now. I just sold a canon 400D with a decent sigma lens for £132 posted. This combo would produce better photos than high end film cameras (in 35mm format obviously) did not that long ago. I’m sure your dad’s old film camera cost a lot more than that when taking into account the inflation. Then every time he loaded it with film it cost more money.

    I think I shot somewhere between five and ten thousand photos in the five years before I got a DSLR. Now I shoot that amount in a busy week, obviously with more duplicates but still. Practicing is easier and you get better much quicker, at least if you want to learn from it.

    in reply to: How do these fauxs get so much business?!?! #20039
    nesgran
    Participant

    Photography is a luxury service to buy and has been for a very long time. The walmart (asda) crowd generally don’t have the means to buy the services of “real” photographers hence they turn to the fauxtographers. Sweeping generalisation but they also tend to think the faux community provides them with a good enough service and don’t see the added value you get from quality photography as opposed to fauxtography. These are people who often don’t have any photo albums at home and quite often didn’t have a camera at all until the smart phones came about. The shoot and burn fauxes are filling that gap, unfortunately the consequences of not running your business legally aren’t severe and known about enough to dissuade them from starting up their businesses. Buying a camera, especially these days is cheap. You can pick up a good enough camera and lens to start learning for £150. This has been true for some time which has meant that photographers can now come from any background rather than those who had enough money to buy and maintain their 4×5 or 8×10 cameras in the olden days. There isn’t a lack of creativity in the lower classes but in my experience from Britain at least there is less interest in photography, especially good photography.

    I think my attitude to the fauxes has mellowed a bit, apart from the ones that shoot weddings and don’t have a clue. If you price yourself at a level to match your skills there is nothing wrong with that. I can’t remember which one of the big names in wedding photography who admits to starting out as one of the $500 shoot and burn togs. These people have their place and if you find yourself competing with them your service isn’t good enough or your are not targeting the right group. There was a recent thread on another photography forum with someone lamenting all the hobbyists out competing him. A brief look through his portfolio it was obvious why, his stuff just wasn’t up to scratch but since he charged like an average good tog his business was failing. Also let’s face it, the average enthusiast these days are producing better work than most photographers dreamt of 30 years ago. This means anyone who want to make a living of photography needs to step their game up and to be good business people. Just have a look through the images at the first few pages on flickr explore or 500px.

    What I think lots of people easily forget is that fauxes are actually pretty good business people in a way. They are enthusiastic, offer a service at an attractive price and they also promote themselves in an effective way. They obviously suck at business not realising that flipping burgers would pay more per hour but that is a different matter. Also lets not forget that some of the people with the widest audience any photographers has ever had have sometimes never held a camera before they signed up to instagram and started snapping.

    What this ultimately means is that photographers have to adapt and overcome. It was the same thing in the late 80’s, early 90’s when cheap consumer SLRs came out and people started charging for pictures taken with their rebel they got for Christmas. The large middle class living in the suburbs aren’t going to stop buying photography. If you can show why your photography is worth its cost you are going to be successful provided you can promote yourself enough to get enough clients. It is also likely that you will need to learn new skills, be it portrait togs doing commercial work for local businesses or learning to do video. If you don’t adapt your business will fail, just look at these people who where the dogs bollocks back in the 80’s but haven’t changed one bit since then. My local photo studio shut down three months ago which I suspect was down to him not having changed for 20 years. I briefly considered popping around to see if he needed someone to assist to learn from him (everyone should do this I think, even if they are seasoned pros) but frankly I don’t think I could learn anything from him. I’m honestly not too sad to see him go other than him now probably being ruined financially.

Viewing 15 posts - 46 through 60 (of 457 total)