My post was not directed towards a crit of your work. It was directed to the poster Jackrabbit in reply to his comments about the work not being what its worth and feeling sorry for clients paying the sums they do. I didn't feel the need to explain myself to Jackrabbit.
You have made many posts here asking for comments on your work to which I don't reply to because I have nothing to say on your work. I am not "driven" to give it in depth comments. Its not a style I like or support and thus have never practiced it and I cannot give any comments that would be beneficial.
Its all good though, I'll continue not posting directly to you on your comment threads, but should I see something that I feel I should comment on (whether its your original post or someone's reply), I'll take note to be as in depth and objective as I can to the post I am replying to.
As I said, I appreciate you helping me out with junior nuthead. I respect you, so when you say things sometimes, it hurts.
Hey if you hate my ****, that is ok. Feel free to disregard. It's not life and death.
At the end of the day, I hope we can respect each other as business people.
First, excuse me Ms. Hypocrite... "Junior nuthead"? Really? After you complaining that he and I were calling you names? Come on.
Second,
LEAVE MY AGE OUT OF THIS? I absolutely
resent older photographers writing my critiques off as irrelevant because I am a sixteen year old high school student. Just because I am younger does
not make my opinion any less pertinent. People use my age as a way of discrediting me. But that's a whole other conversation now isn't it hahaha
[/rant])
Third, I would like to retract all statements made about your prices. It is not my place to comment on the way that you run the business side of your industry.
Fourth, you keep referring to bigtwinky as "a fellow business man." While part of photography is a business, allow me to remind you that on top of that, you are
an artist! Don't
ever forget that! This job that you have decided to pursue is an art! People pay you for your art!
Now let me take a step back and comment on another post you made.
Ok, wow wow wow. Has anyone been to this guy's website? In case you haven't, here it is:
Flickr: jackstrutz's Photostream
I won't lie, there is some good stuff there. But I can't count how many stray hairs are going across that poor beautiful girl's eyes. You would have thought he would take a nanosecond to fix that.
Anyhoo, we obviously have a really different way of doing things. I don't know how many paid jobs he works every year, but I hope he has many.
Because he's got a BIG opinion.
Anyhoo, I'm going to go cry now. Thanks Pete for your support.
(I'm pretty much sure that this will make your day Jack. You can feel superior. That's the coolest. You hurt a person for no reason at all. I hope you are super happy.)
First, when it comes to my Flickr, about 1/4 of the work that is posted is not finished product. That one fourth is for client proofing and technique testing only. The other three-fourths are finished product. The senior photos that I have up there are part of the one-fourth which is for client proofing.
Second, please leave your emotions out of this. For pete's sake... This is not a shot on you. This is an honest opinion. And sometimes the truth sucks. I know that I have had my share of critics who have said something and it really really pissed me off, but it made me take a second look at the thing that I had created and it made me realize that maybe they were right; maybe I could change this or that.
Now I am going to comment on how I feel you could do what the clients who ask for the super smooth skin from you better, and will back it up with my own work.
Now here is something that I do realize. I understand that the people that I work with are, on average, at least a good five years younger than your clients, which does make my job eons easier.
Now here is an example of good skin post processing. Notice how when you look, you can still see the fine details (the pores), but the skin has an overall smooth feel to it still.
This is what you want to accomplish. Let me give you another example.
On this photo, I did the crazy skin smoothing. However, I still maintained the basic detail needed to distinguish features in a face (eg on the jawline, on the sides of the nose, all around the eyes, above and below the lips), and this you have done a pretty consistent job of doing. Notice, though, that the eyes were left more or less un-processed. Eyes are too important of a feature to mess with! When there is something more than just a quick color correct or
slight brighten done to them, it is always immediately noticeable and makes the eyes look out of place on the subject's face. Now, let me show you the conditions that this photo was shot:
This is why I knock you for not producing what you should be with the resources you have available to you. I am able to produce a photo with similar attributes to yours with a set-up like this. Now let me put a disclaimer on that: I understand that working on location is a whole different ball game. I know that. But I'm saying that the post processing you do can be achieved by anybody (I had been into photography for about a month when this was shot). Mind you, my equipment has seen notable changes since this point but still not 5D2 plus 7k per session for whatever else I want.
With the equipment you have--oh my gosh, it gives me the jitters just
thinking about the stuff I would be shooting if your equipment was even an option for me.
I want to take a look at one specific photo from the set you just posted and that is #2. On this photo, the skin smoothing you did caused the loss of the ability to distinguish between where her jaw ends and where her shoulder starts. Now I'm not going to criticize your work further for fear of another emotional breakdown.
I want to say more, I do, because I want to clarify what I mean but unfortunately I have homework that I must attend to, you know, because I'm a junior nuthead high schooler. Before I leave you though I would like to present you with a challenge.
I challenge you to find yourself a model (shouldn't be hard... Happy ex-clients will usually be more than willing to help) and go do a shoot. However, in your post process, I want you to do absolutely
no skin smoothing. I challenge you to challenge yourself to achieve desirable skin straight out of the camera. This is my definition of a true professional photographer and an artist--at least in regards to skin.
Sincerely,
The Junior Nuthead
