C & C please I haven't asked for any in a while, 10 month old photo shoot

[Bitter Jeweler]

Well, start charging then. Heck, you just got endorsed by a pro!
You don't have to listen to anyone's opinion here.

You should start charging as soon as YOU are comfortable doing so. After all, if your clients are happy with your work, I don't see any issues with you selling it. Create your logo, and build a Facebook page and get busy makin' money!

Ain't nobody here gonna stop you.

 

[luvmyfamily]

Well, start charging then. Heck, you just got endorsed by a pro!
You don't have to listen to anyone's opinion here.

You should start charging as soon as YOU are comfortable doing so. After all, if your clients are happy with your work, I don't see any issues with you selling it. Create your logo, and build a Facebook page and get busy makin' money!

Ain't nobody here gonna stop you.

HA! Too funny Bitter. You're trying to get be on that "you are nota photographer site." LOL.....you left out business cards.....

 

[Mamarazzi514]

These ae really bad no offense. What lighting are u using and what is the placement? I hope these are not paying customers

 

[luvmyfamily]

Well, start charging then. Heck, you just got endorsed by a pro!
You don't have to listen to anyone's opinion here.

You should start charging as soon as YOU are comfortable doing so. After all, if your clients are happy with your work, I don't see any issues with you selling it. Create your logo, and build a Facebook page and get busy makin' money!

Ain't nobody here gonna stop you.

I took your idea and my original which was 4.04MB, cropped it and it didn't lose as much quality as your crop did with what little you had to work with. This is the one I am going to use.

tay7 by luvmyfamily1, on Flickr

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Better. But don't you think the white bits are distracting?


My crop was poor quality because it was a zoomed screen cap on an iPad.

 

[luvmyfamily]

Better. But don't you think the white bits are distracting?


My crop was poor quality because it was a zoomed screen cap on an iPad.

I personally think it is better, period. I don't find anything distracting and am drawn to her face.

 

[kundalini]

I took your idea and my original which was 4.04MB, cropped it and it didn't lose as much quality as your crop did with what little you had to work with. This is the one I am going to use.

Better. But don't you think the white bits are distracting?

I personally think it is better, period. I don't find anything distracting and am drawn to her face.

Have another look at Bitter's crop. Not only did he remove the distracting whites at the bottom of the image, he also used a narrower ratio. This helps remove a good deal of the unnecessary background, and improves the viewer's focus on the child.

My crop was poor quality because it was a zoomed screen cap on an iPad.

Excuses, excuses.

 

[luvmyfamily]

I took your idea and my original which was 4.04MB, cropped it and it didn't lose as much quality as your crop did with what little you had to work with. This is the one I am going to use.

Better. But don't you think the white bits are distracting?

I personally think it is better, period. I don't find anything distracting and am drawn to her face.

Have another look at Bitter's crop. Not only did he remove the distracting whites at the bottom of the image, he also used a narrower ratio. This helps remove a good deal of the unnecessary background, and improves the viewer's focus on the child.

My crop was poor quality because it was a zoomed screen cap on an iPad.

Excuses, excuses.

Bitter didn't have my original 4.03MB file size to work with OK, I will crop it one more time (I didn't want to copy him completely, lol), but I don't want to lose too much image quality. Ive already gone from 4.03 to a little ober half a MB.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Keep in mind, doing this cropping, even if severe, is more an exercise to help you work with composition, and hopefully find what's better after the fact. You will store all this in your mind, and when you are out in the field and faced with different situations, your mind should race through your mental library, and get it closer and closer to "right" in camera so you will be doing less cropping after the fact. As you get better, your cropping will amount to fine tuned, little loss of pixels.

I crop every shot I take. The amount is key! It may be 20 pixels off one side, and 10 pixels off the other. It may be rotating the image 3 degrees to straighten it up, and then cropping off the skewed result. My goal is to get it as close as possible in camera, and fine tune after. I nearly always shoot a little wider, simply for fine tuning. Nothing sucks more than not having enough information for the "ideal" composition, and being left with a lesser image.

 

[tirediron]

...Is this a glorified way of saying I am trying too hard?

Yes, in a way.

I live and breathe photography lately, said earlier I am spending about 10 hours a day doing something with photography, whether it be reading, looking online, making phone calls to other photo friends, practice photo sessions (I do about 3 a week here lately), more reading, more reading, more reading, processing, practicing, practicing.....

Were you planning on taking a break and say... breathing any time soon?

no one is trying harder than me. ...

Of this I have no doubt.

My feeling is that you are working hard, but not working smart. You want that perfect picture and you want it NOW! (Am I right? Go ahead... tell me I'm wrong... dare ya'!) There's definietly improvement in your work, but the degree of improvement does not [in my mind] reflect the amount of effort you've put in. I think what you need to do is to find yourself a club or group to join, and preferably someone with some intermediate to advanced skills to mentor you and actually show you how to improve. In fact, I think what you could really benefit from is formal training. Have you looked into any sort of certificate program in your area?

 

[cgipson1]

I think there very good shots personally, any parent would be extremely happy with them, and thats obviously what counts!

The parents, grandparents, friends, friends of friends.....were all happy with them, but CGipson says they are crap and would never present them to a client. I have seen so many "charging photographers" with worse work than I.....and I don't charge a cent.....my payment lately is them simply volunteering and giving me their time.

I didn't say they were crap.. I just said "I" would not present them to a client. I also went over some of the details why.

 

[cgipson1]

These ae really bad no offense. What lighting are u using and what is the placement? I hope these are not paying customers

Not to be rude.. but based on the questions you ask, I would say you are about the same as Luvmyfamily, in your journey into photography. I don't believe you have ever posted an image for critique... and at least she has had the courage to do that.

Please post a website, or your FB page.. so we can evaluate them? (at least if you are going to make comments like that, please back them up!)

Didn't you recently ask a question about what to bounce a flash off outdoors.. and suggested just pointing the flash up over the heads of your subjects (although there is nothing there to bounce off)? I know you are charging... because I remember you came here asking about the tax liability when you got caught charging without ever declaring the income!

 

[DiskoJoe]

On all of the indoor shots.. the whites of her eyes have a cyan cast, has to come from post! What did you do?

Are you using on camera flash (pop-up?) The highlights around her eyes / face in the last one you posted are strange.. not attractive.

Yeah, her eyes don't look like that on the outdoor one? I used a flash with a DIY diffuser (white card over flash) rest of her body was on same exposure...I did play around with colors in the color balance in PS trying to get the colors to pop, so maybe a combo of diffused flash, studio lighting and adjusting colors in post is why her eyes look that way and the outdoor one does not...thank you for pointing that out...I actually thought she had beautiful eyes and long thick eyelashes and personally thought the indoor one's looked better than the outdoor because her eyes didn't do that and I processed the same way however I didn't use a flash outdoors. So are you saying these are awful? ;0

Buy diffuser. They dont cost hardly anything. You could use some more lighting too. These are a bit dark but she also has dark hair and eyes. Those deep brown eyes can be hard to work with because they absorb light. I did some pics for a little girl that looked very similar to your subject here.


ady crossprocessed by DiskoJoe, on Flickr

AS you can see I was barely able to get some of the iris detail.

 

[mommy-medic]

For the baby on the grass I would get closer to her level and use a larger aperture to give the background a creamy bokeh. Also I would process her skin a bit more- has a bluefish hue especially near her eyes.

 

[Ms.Nash]

I have seen so many "charging photographers" with worse work than I.....

I suppose OP can't post any links to support this claim?