C and C please

mrstravis

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These are a few that I took this weekend of a beautiful girl I met on MM. Please let me know what you think.
 

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For some reason they aren't as clear after upload. I'm not sure what happened.
 
C&C per req:

Images are often degraded in the reduction process; what may started out as a 15 or 20 Mb RAW file is now a <250Kb .jpg; LOTS of data loss and quality reduction.

1. The whole image seems soft; I can't pull any EXIF data, so I'm not sure of the casue, but I can't find a point of sharp focus.

2. Her pose seems very awkward and fill light is desparately needed; if you're not kitted out for off-camera flash work yet, consider reflectors; even a big piece of white posterboard would have helped a lot here.

3. Not bad; I'd crop away a bunch of the left side to make her more prominent in the shot and again, the time of day was not your friend. Her face is shadowed and her skirt blown. A reflector or OCF would have helped a lot here.

Overall, not too bad; some exposure issues and posing & directing a model is not a skill learned overnight, but you're on your way. Hope to see more.

Just my $00.02 worth - your mileage may vary.

~John
 
#1 Pose kinda awkward, because as we all know, motorcycles don't move on their kickstands. Light not terrible, but needs fill. Also, frame tighter.

#2 Pose definitely awkward. Way too much armor in the frame.

#3 Pose not terrible, but you should have turned her toward the light, instead of away from it. Also frame closer.
 
C&C per req:

Images are often degraded in the reduction process; what may started out as a 15 or 20 Mb RAW file is now a <250Kb .jpg; LOTS of data loss and quality reduction.

1. The whole image seems soft; I can't pull any EXIF data, so I'm not sure of the casue, but I can't find a point of sharp focus.

2. Her pose seems very awkward and fill light is desparately needed; if you're not kitted out for off-camera flash work yet, consider reflectors; even a big piece of white posterboard would have helped a lot here.

3. Not bad; I'd crop away a bunch of the left side to make her more prominent in the shot and again, the time of day was not your friend. Her face is shadowed and her skirt blown. A reflector or OCF would have helped a lot here.

Overall, not too bad; some exposure issues and posing & directing a model is not a skill learned overnight, but you're on your way. Hope to see more.

Just my $00.02 worth - your mileage may vary.

~John

Thank you for the tips. I actually have a sb700 and right before the shoot I purchased a piece of white poster board and didnt use either. Out of 100+ photos that I took I only liked about 12 of them. I used the view finder for the first time on this shoot and found that I missed focus on a lot of them. Is that common?
 
#1 Pose kinda awkward, because as we all know, motorcycles don't move on their kickstands. Light not terrible, but needs fill. Also, frame tighter.

#2 Pose definitely awkward. Way too much armor in the frame.

#3 Pose not terrible, but you should have turned her toward the light, instead of away from it. Also frame closer.

Lol, it was my husbands motorcycle and she was really not comfortable with even gettinv on it. I will upload some from my laptop tomorrow that are better. I chose to shoot at 10 am to not interrupt anyones weekend but quickly realized it was a mistake. My iso was set to around 2200. Lesdon learned. It was supposed to be a beach shoot but the wind quickly killed that. This wad my first official shoot with a real model and she posed, I shot. I wasn't really comfortable giving orders. Any suggestions for the future?
 
Get closer. A lot closer.

The girl is to small in the image frame (lacks visual weight). More pretty girl. Less ho-hum scenery.

Also, for tall narrow subjects, like people, turn the camera 90° and use a vertical frame.

Get out of the direct sunlight. Find open shade (not dappled shade). Put the subject just inside the shade and use the open sky as your main light. A reflector for fill also helps.
 
Missed focus, on all of them I think so.
 
Posing on a stationary motorcycle is fine, just don't make her pretend to be driving it. Have you seen those pictures where the model simply drapes herself over the bike, not even close to the actual driving position.

Use your flash. And the reflector. As you're composing shots, talk to the model, and give her direction. Tell her how to stand, how to hold her arms, her head, to smile or not, etc. in other words, tell her just about everything. Remember; she can't see what you can see through the viewfinder, and she can't see what the light is doing, and she can't see the background, and she can't see a problem with her costume or hair, but you can.
 
Thank you for the tips. I actually have a sb700 and right before the shoot I purchased a piece of white poster board and didnt use either. Out of 100+ photos that I took I only liked about 12 of them. I used the view finder for the first time on this shoot and found that I missed focus on a lot of them. Is that common?

Are you using single point focus? If not then you need to. If you are trusting your camera with the wide area focus thing (whatever you camera calls it) that's the reason. It averages the focus which means that nothing is sharp but nothing is terribly OOF - that's fine for Facebook snapshots but not for real photography.

12 out of 100 isn't too bad. When I do a studio shoot I probably take 200 - 300 shots and aim to weed that down to 25 for the customer to choose from. As you get better and more experienced your percentage tends to go up, which make the selection process more difficult! ;)
 
Get closer. A lot closer.

The girl is to small in the image frame (lacks visual weight). More pretty girl. Less ho-hum scenery.

Also, for tall narrow subjects, like people, turn the camera 90° and use a vertical frame.

Get out of the direct sunlight. Find open shade (not dappled shade). Put the subject just inside the shade and use the open sky as your main light. A reflector for fill also helps.

Ok thank you for your comments. In the future i will scout out locations before the shoot to make sure I can lessen the amount of scenery and have more of the model.
 
Posing on a stationary motorcycle is fine, just don't make her pretend to be driving it. Have you seen those pictures where the model simply drapes herself over the bike, not even close to the actual driving position.

Use your flash. And the reflector. As you're composing shots, talk to the model, and give her direction. Tell her how to stand, how to hold her arms, her head, to smile or not, etc. in other words, tell her just about everything. Remember; she can't see what you can see through the viewfinder, and she can't see what the light is doing, and she can't see the background, and she can't see a problem with her costume or hair, but you can.

That's all great advice. I will be much more comfortable with giving directions to the model next time. During the shoot I didnt even think of not having her pose like she was riding the bike. I think my primary concern in that instance was making sure nothing happened to my husbands baby. Now that you and a previous person have mentioned it I do see where it looks a little silly.
 
Are you using single point focus? If not then you need to. If you are trusting your camera with the wide area focus thing (whatever you camera calls it) that's the reason. It averages the focus which means that nothing is sharp but nothing is terribly OOF - that's fine for Facebook snapshots but not for real photography.

12 out of 100 isn't too bad. When I do a studio shoot I probably take 200 - 300 shots and aim to weed that down to 25 for the customer to choose from. As you get better and more experienced your percentage tends to go up, which make the selection process more difficult! ;)

I am not using the single focus but I will definitely change my settings. When she got to the location it was so cold and windy that she said she would only last about an hour so 200-300 shots was out of the question but I will definitely aim for more shoshots and more "keepable" shots next go round. Thanks for the advice and comments. I don't feel like such a loser with only 12 shots now! Lol
 
~10% is a very respectable 'keeper' rate; nothing to be worried about there at all. Excellent points raised with respect to the use of single-point AF (placed on/between eyes) and having the subject more prominent in the images. As an example, this is one from a session last year:

LedaA.jpg

Notice how much more of the frame she takes up?
 
..... she said she would only last about an hour so 200-300 shots was out of the question but I will definitely aim for more shoshots and more "keepable" shots next go round. Thanks for the advice and comments. I don't feel like such a loser with only 12 shots now! Lol

Errrm.... 200 - 300 is what I shoot in an hour; true, I shoot dancers (mostly) and to capture a dancer in motion even in a studio setting I take more than the average photographer. At your stage of the game (I'm not too far ahead, I started late) you need to take more shots and dump more. When you get your subject in a pose you like have her vary the pose and move around, flick her hair, try different facial expressions, turn her shoulders this way and that ... and as she does so you go click, click, click, click click!

This is the digital age, get yourself a couple of big memory cards, you don't have to pay for developing and printing! :D
The downside is that you do have to invest the time to sort through them but it's fairly easy in Lightroom and as you go through you can try different crops. Cropping can turn a bleh photo into a winner. When you take more photos you dump more but you also have a statistically higher chance of getting a couple of corkers!

Someone here (I think) used to have a signature on their posts that I took to heart, it said "The difference between a good photographer and a bad photographer is the size of their wastebasket." Don't be afraid to fill the basket and dump the trash! :)
 

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