[nesgran]

Did you shoot this in one shot? Did you never consider doing a simple composite of it since you have two elements away from each other which would have given you more pixels on the finished product and also probably given you an easier time lighting it?

I figured you were running your strobes on low for the stopping capabilities but I was still a little surprised about iso 800

[nesgran]

Your animal and flower photos are nice but there isn’t that much to say about them to be honest. Everyone and their dog takes photos of their cats and post them on the internet. In general these photos aren’t strong enough in composition/subject/colour/etc to stand on their own. If you created a series of shots it might work as a whole but the one offs, well they don’t add much.

The portraits on the other hand are a different matter. Girl with black furry hood up, this is a great shot slightly ruined sadly. She has a great expression, the composition works well for me but sadly focus is on the furry hood instead of her eyes. This could have been a great shot if it was just a little sharper. I would probably have lightened up her face a little, either with a smidge of fill flash or afterwards in post. A third of a stop would be my suggestion as a starting point.

Same girl but with the brownish wheels. Nowhere near as strong as the hood shot, this looks more like a family holiday photo unfortunately. The water bottle steals attention and you never get a sense of context. What are the brown things? They look like cannons but I’m not sure. It could do with a shorter depth of field as well to draw your eyes to the subject. I think (without knowing what the background looks like) that you could have used a shorter lens, shorter depth of field but included more of the surroundings. The harsh sunlight isn’t great but there aren’t too much of the dreaded raccoon eyes at least.

The shells with rings. Main problem, the horizon. It is not level and it cuts through the rings. Why is there another small shell, does it have a meaning or did it just happen to be there?

The bunny is just freaky

The tea mug concept is nice but I’m sure you could find some better representation of cold and miserable than that?

I think you are doing well for the experience you have and the kit available. Your portraits are more interesting than the rest and I think you have done really with with the first portrait apart from a few problems but I’m sure you’ll learn from them and not repeat them again. I hope you show us where you are at in six months!

[nesgran]

Are there no buildings you can get shade behind? Where are you located in the world? What do you have in terms of light gear? Do you own ND filters and/or a polarising filter?

If you have enough oomph in your flash set up and you’ve got a medium strength ND filter you could get them to stand with the sun behind them at 15-30 degrees roughly and then blast them from the front. If you have enough power to do this you can get truly spectacular photos with a deep blue sky behind them but it will require lots of light.

If it is hot a ND filter will help to cut some of the sweatiness and haze.

The easiest way to make this work is to go on an overcast day and use one speedlight off camera to give you a little more interesting light. If has to be a sunny day make it as late as possible.

[nesgran]

I know I’m not telling you anything being a food shooter, but if I sit down in a restaurant and the menu looks beautiful and shows their food at its best, then I will probably be back. It will probably even taste better. I have been unable to decide what to have because everything looked so good on the menu. If the menu looks bad when I first sit down, I’m not so inclined to even place an order.

I don’t know about you but if I was handed a menu with pictures on it I would walk out of the restaurant.

Everything needs to be done on the cheap it seems. I just got asked if I would shoot my girlfriend’s sister’s wedding. For free obviously… I am going to do it for them as otherwise I know the only photos they will have are a couple of blurry iphone photos but I won’t agree to it before I’ve managed their expectations. They are people who simply don’t appreciate value of good photography and they would be prime candidates for hiring a fauxtog. Apparently they’ve completely run out of money and now the wedding will be in their grandparents garden (it isn’t even a nice garden). Blergh, I basically can’t say no and I’m sure they are going to be really grateful but it still irks me a little that they just assumed I would do it. Oh well, at least for once the missus can’t complain I’m taking lots of photos

[nesgran]

It looks great, it is of a quality you’d see in a magazine somewhere.

If I were to make nitpicks though the glass appears to be leaning towards the centre, the sunstar in the collar of the bottle is a little bit distracting and the ice cubes look too big for the glass. Like I said, nitpicks.

Could you not have gotten away with lower ISO?

[nesgran]

I will generally go for top 45 degree with a bounce card on the flash or a stofen (bounce card in large room, stofen in small). This seems to be the most fool proof way, especially when there’s more than one person in the group. It also requires less flash power than blasting backwards. Shooting outdoors a bounce card can be really useful to give just a touch of light to the subjects and it gives a catch light albeit not a great one.

I just find the times I’m using on camera flash most of my photos will have more than one person in it. I’m not sure about having an assistant with a reflector either as it would just be easier having him or her carry a speed light in an umbrella or light softbox like a gami light.

Direct flash has its advantages, my old canon does 1/400 flash sync speed with a manual flash and combine that with 10 fps you get a touch of strobe light to your subjects if shooting sports for example. Just don’t piss them off too much or cause epileptic fits 🙂

[nesgran]

Looking at your gear list I now understand the noise and fake bokeh. You have slow zooms with entry level bodies which aren’t going to cut it when the conditions become challenging.

Good luck, may I suggest offloading some of those lenses and buy more suitable alternatives?

[nesgran]

Look, excuses won’t help here. I take thousands of bad photos every year. The difference between you and me is that I don’t post those photos as a portfolio asking for a critique. I have lots of photos on my hard drive where I have people in posed group shots not looking at me, I have over powering flash use, I have have shoddy white balance etc. I even have some really blurry pictures I’ve forgotten to delete. What I do with those photos is to look at them critically and try to learn from my mistakes. I don’t see this happening here. I looked through the thread from 2012 and you aren’t any better now than you were then. You still do the same mistakes.

I can see two explanations, either you are pretty shit at photography (which I don’t think you are necessarily) or that the people who help you develop are shit. Take a proper look at what you are doing, is this really the level of quality you want to churn out for the rest of your career? If it is, may I suggest you get some kind of liability insurance that will cover you getting sued.

[nesgran]

a 30mm lens is really short unless you do environmental portraits when it can work well, a crop camera won’t magically change the lens to be any longer.

[nesgran]

yup

[nesgran]

It looks that way I’m afraid, here’s my selection of faux photos

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-14-457551278 (poop up flash and camera rotated the wrong way, some weird blur going on.)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-19-457551246 (what happened here, was the background really that bad so you needed to cut it away and put a border in there?)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-8-457551307 (why the blur? Light coming from the other side would have been more flattering as now you’ve made her arm even bigger.This could have been a good classical wedding shot, you’re nearly there)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-16-457551263 (sepia is far too strong and looks instagram, this will not age well)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-7-457551313 (too much back light and too little light from front, since you lifted the shadows so much the noise is awful)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-10-457551295 (blurry and you have a dirty wall behind)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-17-457551260 (while I’m not a fan of selective colour this actually worked pretty well, shame it wasn’t pulled off technically)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-6-457551321 (this is a lot of direct flash. This shot will not age well either with that amount of grain and muddy blacks)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-18-457551252 (four out of five people looking into the camera but two pairs of eyes are barely visible behind the reflections in their glasses, you need light from the side for these situations. There is also a massive blob of light on the back wall)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/Weddings-15-457551271 (midday sun without shade isn’t a good idea, could you not have gone there a bit later in the evening? Focus appears to be on the railing)

http://dklemmphotography.deviantart.com/art/ChurchRainbow-8-397006372 (why is the church leaning off to one side, why is there so much noise, why is there no symmetry going on?)

Don’t get too disheartened though. I think you’ve done well with the basics of most of the posed shots. What has let you down is your technical ability and most of all your post processing. I’d want to give you an assignment, plop the raw files of all these shots into lightroom. What you can’t edit with the sliders and healing brush is too much. You are not allowed to do the black and white either. If the photo isn’t good then it needs to go into the bin.

In the mean time, please don’t solicit your wedding photography services. You are going to get sued otherwise.

[nesgran]

One thing I’ve learned as a doctor for 15 yrs – once a person receives PROFESSIONAL SERVICES for FREE, the uphill battle to convert them to a paying client / patient / customer is as difficult (and as fruitless) as trying to stop the tides. Like the ocean, they will keep coming back and back and back until you finally move on.

At least that is one advantage of being a doctor here (UK), I will never have to charge a patient. At least not until I work privately but that is entirely optional.

[nesgran]

I’ll leave this here, I now wish I’d done what the article says and sent them an invoice for the pics but with fees waived and total sum £0

http://www.thestar.com/business/personal_finance/2013/11/19/what_to_say_when_youre_asked_to_work_for_free.html

[nesgran]

iso 64000?

[nesgran]

I’ll agree your photos are better than most of the fauxes we see here but they are a bit boring with the flat light. I’m sure the older clientele appreciates this but it looks a bit primary school class photos with someone that can’t really be bothered. For the most part there is nothing technically wrong with them but they could be much better with just a touch more effort. A few of the photos are very soft though which I don’t think can be attributed to facebook.

As for pricing, I’d probably bump the 30 minute session up in price to $30 or $35 to get people to buy the hour long one instead as that then seems much better value. If you want short quick things why not offer passport photos for $10 or $15 whichever is the going rate around there? Make sure you delete old posts apologising for this or that once they are out of date and make sure you keep adding content.

If you want some better critiques you could upload 10 or 15 photos to flickr and we could then see them in full resolution and see your exif to look at your settings as well.

Experiment a little and work out some nice looks with the stuff you have available to you as it sounds like you are pretty well set up.

[Author]

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