Guys, sometimes I just feel like I’m being Punk’d. This is not a portrait. This is very bad. And I mean it with the nicest of sincerity. It’s just not a portrait. If you are the maker, and you submitted this, and you really want feedback, I’m going to give you feedback, okay?
You’ve got a choice to make. You always have to ask yourself, the space that’s being left when we leave some negative space, some head room, is it helping or hurting the image? And you know, when photographers get together and they start critiquing stuff like this, if it’s not helping, the argument is always made that it’s hurting, right?
A for effort here. I see what you’re trying to do, but this is poorly executed. You’re trying to drop the kids in, all to the same scene, looking the same way, and clearly our little child on the far right, who is not listening to what’s going on, is more than likely the problem child.
I feel the image is lacking expression, emotion, connection. Sometimes, as we’re doing critiques, we’re looking at the obvious. We’re looking at lighting, we’re looking at posing. Here, I’m just struggling with the connection of our subject. Maybe that’s the goal, but these are things you want to be looking at.
All too often, when we think of noise in photography, we are thinking about our images. The truth is, noise is one of the biggest risks to our business and to our overall mental health. I am talking about the noise of the universe here.
As you cull your most recent wedding, you might be asking yourself, “When do I go black & white?” Throughout my career, I have displayed both color and black & white photos in my portfolio. I enjoy black & white images, because there’s simply something different to them.
A sales funnel is simply a conceptual representation of the path that people take from “lead” to “client.” Since literally every client was once a lead, every client came through your funnel—even if you didn’t know you had one.
When it comes to soft light, size matters! Yep, I went there. Hey, come on, who can resist a good cheesy photo joke? Not I! But seriously, its true—when you want soft light, the larger and broader the light source used, the softer the quality of the resulting light.
Black & white should be used to remove distractions from your image and help bring more focus to your subject. A black & white portrait can help focus on your subject’s emotion, as well as eliminate color patterns that take attention away from them. The key is to use black & white to help communicate your vision more efficiently than a color image would do.
Do you have an emotional connection to the landscape or subject in front of you? I’ve found that I’m most focused and successful when I’m passionate about the subject. For me, it’s landscape; for you, it could be portraits, botanicals, abstracts, or long-exposure architecture.
In today’s competitive landscape, quality online photography training and education is priceless to your growth. Unfortunately, most publications contain a ton of fluff. No real meat to their content. Not at Behind the Shutter. We are committed to the photography community and improving professional photography by providing current, insightful, and in-depth educational content.
Training topics include photography lighting techniques, photography off-camera flash tips, photography posing guides, photography business concepts and marketing strategies, Facebook for photographers, boudoir and glamour photography training, high-school senior photography concepts, IPS (In-Person Sales) strategies, family photography, Lightroom tutorials, Photoshop how-tos, and much, much more.
