Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Help me out here.

I was poking around Model Mayhem earlier looking for ideas for shots and just ran into a ton of bad photos. I was trying not to just stick to well known photographers, but instead looking at portfolios of random models.

I saw a lot of things like this:


THIS IS NOT MY PHOTO, I'm merely linking to a public shot for purposes of critique and "fix-it" learning experience.


and before I go any further, let me apologize to the photographer, maybe our tastes differ.

This is an aspiring model's headline shot. There are three comments saying "Lovely" and "Beautiful!". I presume they are talking about the model herself as she is quite nice looking.

However, I'm dumbfounded, because, while the model isn't bad looking, the shot itself is TERRIBLE. Keep in mind, I'm judging it on the standards of a "professional fashion photographer", which is what I sort of assumed one might find in MM profiles.

I've decided to take this as a learning experience. I put together a list of things I thought could use improving in this shot. Sure, it's worded harshly because I'm in a bad mood today, but let me know what you think of both my comments and the shot itself.

Please tell me if I'm wrong in my assertions because I'm new to this particular kind of photography myself. I've been a photographer for a long time, but I only do casual portraits and would only barely consider myself knowledgable enough to try to shoot professional models!

So, instead of "hey, great shot", here is the comments I wanted to post (but I won't, because there's no sense wrecking a model's portfolio page in order to criticize a photographer).

1) The white balance is horrible. Yellow skin looks gross to me and the fill flash was clearly not gelled so one side of her face is white and the other is yellow (yuk!) Sure, it's hard to balance the colours this time of day, but that's no excuse for shooting bad photos. Wait 30 more minutes, use a gel, bring a second light!

2) There are shiny specular reflections on her face. Ewww! Seriously, less than 1 second with a clone or healing brush tool and that's gone.

3) Half her body is almost completely blown from over exposure, even where it's not blown to white, the yellow is clipping on her skin in places.

4) There are shadows on her face. Sure it can be dramatic, but I think it just fails in this shot.

5) There are tree branches coming out of her head. Yikes!

6) There is an ugly old green metal THING in the background that is extremely distracting (there is even a man walking on the path in the distance). Background control is like lesson A#1 when I talk to others about portrait shooting.

7) It's clearly shot with a wide angle lens. I can't see her feet, but I can see a bunch of the ground (including a nasty shadow) behind her, as well as sky above her. This means, her face is getting squished, her shoulders are being pulled in... these are all problems with wide-angle perspective distortion. Use a portrait lens!!! (Not to mention the advantages to long lenses for background control, etc)

Using an on-camera fill makes for the weird "bulls eye" catchlights (right in the center of the eye). They are not pleasing to me. Catchlights seem to look best when they are off-axis and high. This isn't something I've read somewhere, just something I've noticed looking at LOTS of photos.

9) Her shirt is wrinkled and not tucked in properly. It seems to me that it's the photographer's job to notice things like that and make sure it's just right before shooting. I know this can be tricky and is excusable because it's so damn hard to do.. Sure, we'll give him a pass on that one.



OK, so here is how I fix it.

Pull out a 200mm lens, put an ND filter on it and shoot at f/2.8.

The background compresses and blurs, the model pops out of the fence, and the shit behind her goes away into a nice colourful smooth background and even the blurring of the telephoto-compression-narrowed fence line draws your eye into the model's face.

Use a silver reflector, low camera left for fill, it also matches the colour of the sun nicely, and then you can cool the background a bit to balance the colours, the model pops out of a slightly cool background and it looks like a fall evening, even when it's not.

Ditch the on-camera fill flash and if you still need fill after using the reflector, place it high, left about 45 degrees off-axis and make sure it's a good temperature for the shot (you might need a 1/2 CTO or so to keep it from looking blue).

THEN, I think we have a workable shot.

Comments?

I would guess most model mayhem photographers are not pros. There are many great exceptions such as one of my favorites http://www.modelmayhem.com/zemotion. And as you assumed Model Mayhem is really set up for the models so most comments refer to the models. It's a good place for aspiring photographers to find aspiring models to shoot.

AS for the shot "No comment"

yeah, nor are the models it's "my friend has a camera and helped me take this photo"

Good points, guys.

I guess one of the things that sort of set me off was seeing a bunch of "lovely" and "wonderful" comments under it.

Of course, the girl is quite nice, and that's where they're aimed- I think somewhere in my head, that didn't click right away because right at the very moment I read those comments, I was thinking "man, what a horrible photo" (in the context of a professional shoot, anyway)

Keep in mind some people have really low expectations. I see lots of out of focus shots scattered throughout discussion forums and there are lots of "nice shot" or "great picture" comments when I personally would've deleted the shot or never posted in the first place.

That's fair. I love constructive criticism, it's a bit hard to find. Some places are just full of "hey, wonderful photo" for every old snapshot, and other places are full of really grumpy folks who would rip a hole in just about anything.

I used to participate in one of those forums, 6 or 8 years ago and for kicks one time, I posted an award winning documentary photo of life in the Inner City in the critiques area, and it got torn up as for a bunch of reasons before someone recognized it as an award winning shot that hangs in a dozen museums.

There's gotta be a middle ground!

you want criticism - post to our Critique section. But be prepared.