angelo_lightning
TPF Noob!
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2015
- Messages
- 38
- Reaction score
- 11
- Can others edit my Photos
- Photos OK to edit
so I shot a family reunion.
1. I stupidly tried to do nothing but candid shots. Dont know what I was thinking. I was trying to be like an invisible ninja. I somehow thought that over the course of the day people would naturally hug and kiss and I'd get all the relationship shots I needed. I actually got most of them. But some people were camera shy. In the future I'm going to just stop people and be like... 'pose and hug'. Here, hold this poster that says, 'family' for a second while looking into eachothers eyes. Etc. So I dont have to rely solely on candid shots. When I was going through my pics I really wished that I could tell a 'story'. And it would have been awesome to have certain posed shots to punctuate the candid shots.
2. I did try and wrangle the people into group portrait shots at the end. But everyone was basically WASTED. Like trying to herd cats. Everyone's eyes and posture were super drunk and no one looked that good in the shots. The women had been swimming and didnt have on makeup, etc. And everyone was holding beers and margaritas. Basically... all of my shots have zillions of alcoholic beverages scattered in the background and in peoples hands. I thought about trying to photoshop it all out, but it literally would have taken a solid week just for that. So in the future Ill have to get group shots/portraits at the Beginning when people are sober, energized, calm, tractable, dressed, hair done, makeup on.
3. All of my amazing shots came using my 70-200mm/2.8/crop sensor. I used an 18-50mm indoors and when taking group shots, but the pictures were barely better than an iphone to be honest. the bokeh and the quality of the light on the longer lens made me feel like i gave those people professional pictures. In the future, I'm going to really focus harder on using the longer lens as much as possible.
4. I relied WAY too much on cropping and it screwed me. Instead of composing shots and filling the frame I just took a picture that had what I wanted within it. I was leery of getting too close to people and disturbing them. Later, my pictures basically ended up being lower resolution and less sharp because I cropped out like a chunk one fifth the size of the actual picture.
5. I had to reign in my artistic desire almost totally. The family insisted they wanted candid, true to life pictures. Every time I added too much of a rosy glow or photoshopped someone into a super model, the people i asked their opinion, seemed less than enthused. So I ended up mainly sharpening, highlighting, removing skin blemishes, and fixing exposure. I have yet to do a wedding, but maybe because it was a family reunion, they didnt want 'film look' or stuff like that. They wanted realistic. Candid.
6. I lost a lot of amazing pictures because my shutter speed was too slow. While taking the pictures I occasionally looked at them in the viewfinder. They looked sharp to me. So I'd take a zillion pictures and then adjust occasionally. But when I got home and fired them up in photoshop, to my dismay a lot of great shots were blurry. Or they would be sharp but a person would be clapping or waving their arm or something and it would be completely blurred out. So... in the future I'm just going to keep my shutter speed super high. With a full frame camera and better lenses I wouldn't have as much problem shotting indoors i think.
7. DANCING. OMG. I thought I was getting good pictures of people dancing. Instead I was getting motion blurs, and when it was sharp enough, people locked into agonized torturous poses. In the future I'm thinking I'll try and shoot dancing in burst mode? Try to pick my angles and moments better. Basically... I need to specifically practice shooting people while dancing to maximize the probability of getting decent shots. Because people are not professional dancers, so trying to get a good shot of them dancing is harder than I imagined.
8. Processing pictures takes way longer than i thought it would and I wanted to vomit by the time I had gone through 1200 pictures, organized them, picked out the best ones, processed them, made sure everyone was represented and in certain ratios, and put into a chronological and spatial order.
9. I vignetted a few pictures then I ended up basicaly doing some type of vignetting on all of them. I got like... trapped into it, because it looked weird only having it on some. And honestly... I didnt do that great a job at it. Before I felt a little vignetting and burning the edges of photographs really set them off, but after finishing and looking at the whole thing... it looked kind of tacky. Really have to figure this out in the future.
10. I struggled with cropping. When I was just doing photography for fun, I cropped pictures precisely how I wanted to. But since these pictures needed to be printable I tried to stick with standard crop sizes. 7x5, 8x10, etc. And I really felt a couple pictures suffered. Very frustrating.
11. So I bluffed my way through a job but it was low risk. They knew it was my first time and the idea of having a professional photographer was kind of an unexpected plus, so I wasnt in danger of ruining anyones life if I didnt get a perfect picture of a certain moment. Still not ready for a wedding or something like that. Think I'll take some classes, shoot some events around town, n try to get on as an assistant photographer before I charge someone thousands of dollars for a wedding.
1. I stupidly tried to do nothing but candid shots. Dont know what I was thinking. I was trying to be like an invisible ninja. I somehow thought that over the course of the day people would naturally hug and kiss and I'd get all the relationship shots I needed. I actually got most of them. But some people were camera shy. In the future I'm going to just stop people and be like... 'pose and hug'. Here, hold this poster that says, 'family' for a second while looking into eachothers eyes. Etc. So I dont have to rely solely on candid shots. When I was going through my pics I really wished that I could tell a 'story'. And it would have been awesome to have certain posed shots to punctuate the candid shots.
2. I did try and wrangle the people into group portrait shots at the end. But everyone was basically WASTED. Like trying to herd cats. Everyone's eyes and posture were super drunk and no one looked that good in the shots. The women had been swimming and didnt have on makeup, etc. And everyone was holding beers and margaritas. Basically... all of my shots have zillions of alcoholic beverages scattered in the background and in peoples hands. I thought about trying to photoshop it all out, but it literally would have taken a solid week just for that. So in the future Ill have to get group shots/portraits at the Beginning when people are sober, energized, calm, tractable, dressed, hair done, makeup on.
3. All of my amazing shots came using my 70-200mm/2.8/crop sensor. I used an 18-50mm indoors and when taking group shots, but the pictures were barely better than an iphone to be honest. the bokeh and the quality of the light on the longer lens made me feel like i gave those people professional pictures. In the future, I'm going to really focus harder on using the longer lens as much as possible.
4. I relied WAY too much on cropping and it screwed me. Instead of composing shots and filling the frame I just took a picture that had what I wanted within it. I was leery of getting too close to people and disturbing them. Later, my pictures basically ended up being lower resolution and less sharp because I cropped out like a chunk one fifth the size of the actual picture.
5. I had to reign in my artistic desire almost totally. The family insisted they wanted candid, true to life pictures. Every time I added too much of a rosy glow or photoshopped someone into a super model, the people i asked their opinion, seemed less than enthused. So I ended up mainly sharpening, highlighting, removing skin blemishes, and fixing exposure. I have yet to do a wedding, but maybe because it was a family reunion, they didnt want 'film look' or stuff like that. They wanted realistic. Candid.
6. I lost a lot of amazing pictures because my shutter speed was too slow. While taking the pictures I occasionally looked at them in the viewfinder. They looked sharp to me. So I'd take a zillion pictures and then adjust occasionally. But when I got home and fired them up in photoshop, to my dismay a lot of great shots were blurry. Or they would be sharp but a person would be clapping or waving their arm or something and it would be completely blurred out. So... in the future I'm just going to keep my shutter speed super high. With a full frame camera and better lenses I wouldn't have as much problem shotting indoors i think.
7. DANCING. OMG. I thought I was getting good pictures of people dancing. Instead I was getting motion blurs, and when it was sharp enough, people locked into agonized torturous poses. In the future I'm thinking I'll try and shoot dancing in burst mode? Try to pick my angles and moments better. Basically... I need to specifically practice shooting people while dancing to maximize the probability of getting decent shots. Because people are not professional dancers, so trying to get a good shot of them dancing is harder than I imagined.
8. Processing pictures takes way longer than i thought it would and I wanted to vomit by the time I had gone through 1200 pictures, organized them, picked out the best ones, processed them, made sure everyone was represented and in certain ratios, and put into a chronological and spatial order.
9. I vignetted a few pictures then I ended up basicaly doing some type of vignetting on all of them. I got like... trapped into it, because it looked weird only having it on some. And honestly... I didnt do that great a job at it. Before I felt a little vignetting and burning the edges of photographs really set them off, but after finishing and looking at the whole thing... it looked kind of tacky. Really have to figure this out in the future.
10. I struggled with cropping. When I was just doing photography for fun, I cropped pictures precisely how I wanted to. But since these pictures needed to be printable I tried to stick with standard crop sizes. 7x5, 8x10, etc. And I really felt a couple pictures suffered. Very frustrating.
11. So I bluffed my way through a job but it was low risk. They knew it was my first time and the idea of having a professional photographer was kind of an unexpected plus, so I wasnt in danger of ruining anyones life if I didnt get a perfect picture of a certain moment. Still not ready for a wedding or something like that. Think I'll take some classes, shoot some events around town, n try to get on as an assistant photographer before I charge someone thousands of dollars for a wedding.
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