Family portrait C&C

[Christie Photo]

I'm just curious.... I'd enjoy hearing some critiques on this one.

-Pete

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[NateS]

I'm just curious.... I'd enjoy hearing some critiques on this one.

-Pete

Well, I'm a little scared to post my actual thoughts on the photo since they were taken by such a world renowned photographer....but I will anyway.

I don't say this often, but I think I could have done a better job. I'm sure they wanted a background showing an actual place common to them rather than a studio, BUT, she could have surely found a better background than that throughout the entire white house. I mean, the background has the edge of a fireplace, two separate doorways openings, and a crease (corner) in the wall behind them.

Second, the lighting looks really odd to me....makes it look like the president was pasted into the image. Granted, it probably didn't help her any that two of them wore white while two of them wore black....but wedding photographers handle that situation all the time.

Who knows...I don't know what kind of situation she was put in. She may have only been given the one location as an option, and may have been limited on her lighting....even still, when offered to photograph the president and his family, I'm sure she wouldn't say no regardless of the issues.....I know I wouldn't have said no.

[Big Mike]

That's definitely not Annie's strongest work.

Just for fun...
The composition isn't great. It looks like two groups of two, rather than a family of four. I think that having two of them (perhaps the daughters) lower, would have been better.
Tough clothing to work with. The two white tops are blown out and the dark top looks lost in shadow. (actual print might be better).

What really bothers me is Sasha's hand. The more I look at it, the more it looks like a disembodied hand. Overall, the arms & hands could be better...but I'm guessing that the casual feel was more important here than perfect hand placement.

The background isn't great for a typical family portrait...but again, casual feel seems to be the trump card.

Hopefully she got paid well for this one....she needs the money.

[CCarsonPhoto]

This was posted on another forum....and well, yikes. Basically it boiled down to "She's been photographing that family since '04-she could have done much better, particularly for being in the pro circuit." and I agree. But a lot of people had a problem looking past who took the photo and who the photo was of. That was the "yikes" part.

[GeneralBenson]

More than anything, it just looks huried and completely unplanned. Like the family was sitting around and Anne walked by and was like, 'hey guys, didn't know you were gonna be here. Let go grab an octa and we'll bang out a few shots.' Nothing besides the fact that the right people are in the shot and they're all seated looks planned to me. It looks like it was shot with a longer lens at like f/22, and it has this remarkably two dimensional feel to it. Why two people are in white, one person is in black and one person is in both is beyond me. The posing and hand/arm stuff is awkward at best. I'm not really digging it. But maybe regular people do, who don't look at it like photographers. After all, she's Anne Leibowitz. What the heck do I know? For all we know this will be regarded as some work of pure genius in the future. THe bottom line, is that most famous pictures aren't really that amazing, especially of politicians and famous people. Like Jackie Kennedy, none of those shots are that mind blowing, bu they're perfect shots of JK.

[bigtwinky]

Sometimes, people just want the name associated with their photograph.

Its an alright photo, nothing inspiring. I think the pros here can pick it apart a little better than I can. So yeah, seems that they just wanted her to shoot it.

Hopefully she got paid well for this one....she needs the money.

Well Mike, seems that she wasn't paid very well.
"despite her massive financial woes, this one was on the house."

[Sw1tchFX]

blah blah blah lighting could be better, i could have done this, i would have done that, blah blah blah


It's just a little atypical for what she's recently been doing the last few years. It looks more like what she was doing a few decades ago. Nothing wrong with that.

I also don't think anyone could necessarily do it better, but most people would probably do it different.

Whatever, it's just a picture of the first family anyway, c'mon, it's not like we don't see this all the time.