[nesgran]

I’m guessing money is short (it certainly was for me at that age) but you need flashes rather than continuous light. LED panels are great for things like product photography or video, portraits not so much for the simple reason you noted with either they melt your face or they aren’t bright enough. My suggestion would be to get two yongnuo yn-560III flashes and a single rf-603 transmitter. This is my standard recommendation unless you have money to step up to canons RT system which really isn’t much of an option given that you are part of the dark side 🙂

You can pick up a YN-560 III for about $70 off ebay, the transceiver maybe $15 and four sets of sanyo eneloop batteries for about $50 with a charger. Basically $200 for that lot. Cheap light stands and umbrellas won’t cont very much either, probably a bit over $100 if you buy the cheap stuff. If $300 is too much in one go, get one set of flash, light stand etc and it’ll be $160. One umbrella is enough to light lots of things and an excellent place to learn how to use light creatively. The bare flash will work quite well outdoors as well, I often stick one in a tree for example and it provides a bit of fill for more interesting light.

Go and read strobist.com lighting 101 for some inspiration. Once you know how to use off camera light and when to use it you can really make your photos stand out and will be vital for you if you want to continue with a career in photography.

As for cleaning the camera, first step should be to get a rocket blower. Turn the camera with sensor facing down and open it up with the manual cleaning mode and blow a number of times on the sensor from a safe distance. Wet cleans aren’t that difficult but you have the potential to screw up badly if something goes wrong, hence try to blow it out first.

[nesgran]

Since it seems you will be doing more portraits than anything else I’ll concentrate on those (especially since I’m not very good at landscapes)

The two photos with the frames held, they aren’t really doing it for me. The frame holding is a bit clichéd and the guy just looks a bit awkward. Neither of the two photos are particularly sharp either, the photo of the two girls in particular so. In that shot the stiching on their chest is reasonably sharp but their eyes aren’t at all. What kind of light are you using in these photos? I see two round catchlights with a third tiny in the middle (two brollies over your shoulders and poop up flash for triggering?) but you still had to bump ISO to 400 at f2 which suggests to me there wasn’t a whole lot of light being thrown out from your light setup. To make these two better I’d ditch the frames and get them to stand a bit more naturally, get them to take a step or two forwards, close the aperture down to f2.8-4 to get a little more of them in focus and to allow for more mistakes on your behalf when it comes to focussing. If at all possible, a light for the background would be good as the background is now darker and the yellow walls look quite dirty.

Girl looking out of the window: not bad but there is still room for some improvement. First off I’d use a slightly longer focal length as her left cheek now looks bigger and her face goes a little chubby. Focus could probably be slightly more back (in a perfect world) to get the whole facing eye in focus. There are quite a lot of chromatic aberrations around her far eye which would be fairly easy to get rid of in lightroom for example. Main problem though is the yellow roof in the background that seems to grow out of her far cheek.

The colour run ones, there isn’t much to do about harsh sunlight unless you can get them under some kind of shade. Be careful with the colour stuff though as it will get into your lenses and it won’t ever come out again.

The fashion show ones: Girl with turquoise/brown dress, her face is too soft to be usable (again boob seeking af), girl with flowers in her hair you could have probably pulled back the highlights a little as the light is good for darker skin. The pose looks awkward and you’ve cut her arms off in a weird way, same with the shot before. The backgrounds for all these have lots and lots of single pixels of bright colours, I’d just get of them with some aggressive noise reduction in the background. Focus needs to be on their eyes in general rather than the middle of them as in these shots, it is less of a problem for guys but the better endowed ladies don’t get sharp eyes. Because you are sitting below them the plane of focus is going to be slicing them at an angle so make sure you get the important parts in focus.

Bunny girl should have been shot so you got the whole of her hands in the picture with less space above the ears

Girl by apple trees, this just looks awkward, get rid of it completely. There is also sensor dust showing

You’re doing well but you need to practice a bit more, especially when it comes to keeping the right parts of the people in focus. A shot doesn’t have to be super sharp in 100% view but when you can see it from the fairly small flickr thumbnails it is too soft (generally). As nice as it is to stare at a chest it shouldn’t be what your eyes are drawn to 🙂

[nesgran]

Any chance of getting a wrinkly backdrop? Is that possible? The wrinkly is really important as I’ve seen all the photographers on facebook use it

[nesgran]

Best of luck on your wedding day Julia!

As for seeing more photos, if you say what the password is and give you enough clues to get said password in one single googling you have basically left the password in the open and you as well not have bothered. What I saw wasn’t cherry picked portfolio photos but rather the harsh reality of the crap being delivered to paying customers.

[nesgran]

Erm, shouldn’t that read YOUR company? Why would anyone hire you if they can’t even see any examples of your work?

I hope you paid John Legend for the music

Now, if we then critique your photography (fauxtography) things get far more interesting. I see hilariously bad composition, vicious noise, lacking colour balance, severe focus issues, some random hipstagram effects thrown in, frequent use of the poopup flash/too much direct on camera flash, posed group shots where no one (!) is looking at the photographer, tilted horizons, I see a wrinkly backdrop, a photographer with jeans at a wedding (I really hope you aren’t taking on second shooters). I should really suggest if you use a password for your smugmug (very professional) you don’t select something that takes a whole 15 seconds to google.

Sorry to piss on your chips but why would anyone actually hire you? Your photos are sub par and your prices are out of faux land. I see lots of weddings in the list, I would have expected more than this however given your less than subtle advertising I wasn’t expecting too much to begin with. You proved me right.

[nesgran]

For events second shooter gigs can be paid or unpaid depending on what is expected of you. If the photographer let’s you tag along with the assumption that any photos you provide that are good enough to use are only a bonus then expect not to get paid. If on the other hand he trusts you and knows what you can do it may well be paid. Same goes if you assist in a studio however, you probably wouldn’t actually take any photos yourself but rather help with lights etc. What you get paid in is experience and contacts.

@Bagga As for gear a few of the photos show that a Nikon D800E was used so any pentax offering would be at least two steps downgrading. I don’t really agree with you that lightroom is over complicated either but I can see where you are coming from with regards to photoshop.

@OP What you are telling me and looking at the exposure settings I think you don’t have enough light available to you for what you are trying to do. If you shoot in a studio f8, iso100 and a 85-135mm lens is a very good starting point unless you want a specific look for some reason. Looking at the catchlights, are you using only a window for light? The recommendation to look at strobist.com is a very good one, I think you could bring your studio shots up in quality if you learnt how to light them with more light that what you have naturally available.

[nesgran]

Don’t get me wrong, your photos aren’t awful but they could use a little polish. Very few of the photos you have on there are photos that people would actually pay for though which suggests to me you probably need more experience with a variety of subjects (i.e. people as flowers/dogs/squirrels won’t pay you for photos).

I don’t think you are ready to be charging yet based on this. The photos aren’t really the problem although you have some major depth of field issues but the spread just isn’t there. Give yourself a bit more time and build up the necessary experience before committing to this as a business. Taking good photos is only a minor part of being a self employed photographer after all. With the photos you have on there I’d be surprised if you couldn’t get some second shooter jobs with local pros for both studio or weddings.

[nesgran]

Unless your lenses are the new stm kit lenses and the tripod is a better known model $1000 is very ambitious. Have a look at ebay to get an idea of what would be reasonable but I imagine $7-800 is much more likely. It doesn’t matter what you paid for the kit, it depends on what you can buy it for now.

[nesgran]

That makes sense but it was brighter in there than I imagined. ISO 6400 is doable on the 5DIII, especially if you shoot in B&W so that could afford you a little higher shutter speed and/or smaller aperture. Unless you have coloured lights Tv mode can work well, especially since you can set desired aperture ranges within the automatic selection. The automation in the camera will do a quicker job of it than you can.

[nesgran]

I like the expressions and the contrast in the black and white images. They are punchy, moody and the cut off appendages work well in the images to create mood. For example the arm in the shot of the girl sitting down and looking like she might cry, it is pretty foreboding.

As for things to improve some of the shots are lacking a little in depth of field like the shot weapons of choice where the guy in the left is out of focus. It is however a bit difficult to give advice since we can’t see exif and and see if it is even feasible. On the whole I think you’ve done well however some shots are let down by not having everything sharp that should be sharp.

[nesgran]

I always get amazed that all of the eastern bloc has better petrol than the US although you can still buy 80 octane petrol over there. The regular stuff over here is 95 octane and the good stuff 97-99 depending on where you fill up

When I was 18 and had just gotten my first car (a 1988 Volvo 240 in white, hey I was living in Sweden!) I rarely filled up more than half way as I had petrol nicked a couple of times out of it despite having a locking lid. Not filling up properly is silly though as you will have to do it sooner or later anyway.

[nesgran]

Why in the name of all that is holy would you want a combination lock on your car? Locker yes, car seems like a ridiculous idea!

I think they call it gas.

As for making cars more expensive, it isn’t hard given what Ford charges you for a pick up which has suspension from the middle ages and an engine which would have seemed nice in the 70’s. If the Brits hadn’t been so stubborn and decided to do everything literally opposite of what the French do the cars would have been cheaper. Left hand drive cars are cheaper on average.

[nesgran]

The higher res version was certainly a lot better with better colour.

As for a couple of small crits, like others have said the catch lights are distracting and I’d say get rid of the bottom catch lights.

The watermark is not in a good place. What you could do which would also make it much harder to get rid of is to place it on the darker section of her scarf under her chin. Curve it to let it follow the shape of the scarf and it will both blend in better but also be more visible but less intrusive. If this doesn’t make sense I’ll show you what I mean.

As for the photo in technical terms, I would say that you could have stopped down a little more than f5 as the tassels on the scarf are slightly soft.

I had a look at some of the other photos and they are all technically sound and well composed. You are probably at a stage where you need to sit down with someone for a one to one crit with the images printed 8×10 or so.

[nesgran]

So I’m guessing you are using a continuous light in that umbrella. It is rarely a good idea when it comes to people as they either don’t give off enough light or they will melt the face of the person you are photographing. A speedlight will give you far more flexibility. Personally I’m not a major fan of umbrellas either as they will spill large amounts of light everywhere. Sometimes it can be handy as it gives you ambient light as well as directional light but for the majority a couple of softboxes are going to be a better option. Umbrellas are great for learning though as they are cheap as chips.

As for your photos, I like them for most part but they leave a bit to be desired. Had they been taken with a proper camera they would have been passable as the lighting is usually interesting enough to carry the shot. First off get rid of the borrowed photo, it isn’t yours and shouldn’t be there. Second, the half naked lady with the tattoos need to go, they are not flattering shots. Sepia next to B&W is not a look that works, either or is the key. The big problem is your camera, it simply isn’t capable enough to work in this setting and you are going to have to spend a little money to progress from where you are.

First purchase should be a new camera, or rather a used camera. My suggestion for bargain basement camera would be a canon 40D in decent nick. Add to that the very decent 50mm f1.8 lens which can be had for very little. I don’t know what the used market looks like where you live but here the combo above would set you back around £200, or about twice what your powershot cost. Reason for a 40D is that they are very cheap for the performance you get from them as people don’t want 10mpix anymore which is stupid. The body is solid metal which gives it more heft which in turn makes it more stable. It has a decent autofocus system and the images from it are brilliant. Because it was positioned in the semi pro bracket when it came out it has more options than your equivalently priced rebel series camera would and also far better ergonomics.

Next purchase would be two speedlights, yongnuo 560III combined with a single yongnuo rf603 will allow you to sync the flashes wirelessly. You have one lightstand and umbrella already so you probably only need a flash bracket for that and another stand, bracket and umbrella or softbox for the other flash. The reason for the second flash is to be able to lighten shadows or provide rim light as needed. Three flashes would be ideal but obviously more expensive. White, grey and black foam board is handy to have and you can use them as light modifiers or as reflectors, especially if you glue tin foil to one of them. Each will cost a couple of dollars in A1 size which is pretty big.

If you can’t swing the light set up above a single speedlight would work, the poop up flash on the 40D will be able to fire the flash is slave mode. The speedlight you would use like you are using your lamp at the moment, except it gives you far more light.

Stick camera in manual and tweak light until you can shoot at iso 100, f8 and 1/100 (last doesn’t really matter with flash)

Good luck!

[nesgran]

There are actually some really good third party flashes out there now. The Yungnuo are probably the best known ones and their flashes go for very reasonable money, just make sure you look at what functions the flash you are looking at actually offers as some are very basic.

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