"I ONLY shoot...."

[Overread16 4]

Sounds like she's either clueless or she's trying to follow Ken - sometimes being "extreme" against the flow of the norm gets you a lot more attention than being the norm. Consider how much attention Ken gets just because "he never uses a tripod".

It's actually a very crafty way to do marketing so long as you don't want to aspire to being the best teaching resource.

 

[Designer]

FWIW; I endured her short promo video. She uses flash, and more like one frame per camera position/pose.

 

[Derrel]

Yeah well, 5 stars doesn't mean what it used to I've read some craptacular books that were rated very highly by readers, but all this tells me is that the people who are reading these books have poor judgment skills. She actually wrote, "I love me some bokeh"? That's just poor writing. For an informal conversation or forum thread or something, fine, but for a published book? Poor form.

She also says things like. "I'm a cannon girl" "I'm a prime girl" things, like you mention I would expect to read on an Internet forum. NOT from a professional writing a book.

While we are on the subject of bokeh, please help me figure out this nagging issue I have when people discuss it. Bokeh, is the "quality of the out of focus area in a picture" so you can have good bokeh, creamy bokeh, bad bokeh. With all quality, there is a spectrum right? So why do I always hear "I love bokeh!" "This is my most recent bokeh shot" Don't you need to specify what KIND of bokeh you are talking about? Or am I just completely off base here.

The word "bokeh" was brought to the English-speaking world in the early 1990's by Mike Johnston, who now writes and publishes The Online Photographer. He is the **one, single, specific person** who introduced the word bokeh to the English-speaking world. NOT kidding. I believe it was when he was editor of Photo Techniques magazine. he even added the H to the Japanese word boke, which means "the blur". His blog, TOP, did a week-long discussion and series of short articles discussing what bokeh is, and is not. Bokeh originally began as meaning the character, the quality, the lens drawing style, of the out of focus areas in a photograph. Some lenses produce specific types of bokeh: there are things like "onion" bokeh; cat's eye bokeh; swirling bokeh; and there are flaws, like "double-lining", where the lens tends to create two lines out of one, single object, such as a flower stem or a tree trunk. SOme lenses create smoothm, soft, dreamy out of focus bakvgrounds, while others create "nervous" or "jittery" out of focus backgrounds. The ones with smooth backgrounds have "creamy bokeh", while, well, you get the idea.

But the term bokeh has, nowadays, kind of morphed. Many people use selective focus and many use shallow depth of field techniques, and erroneous refer to that as "bokeh photography" or "bokeh pictures". The difference between selective focus, and resulting shallow depth of field, was covered very extensively by Mike Johnston, on TOP. The English language never stays the same; there is an entire sub-set of people who do not know what bokeh means, as properly defined, so...we're stuck with somewhat inaccurate use of the term, and I see no way out.

 

[e.rose]

Just checked out her site.

I'm not a fan.

You could fine WAY better, and credible boudoir inspiration to learn from.

Yes. Even from another GIRL. :roll: :er:

 

[Josh66]

I wonder how long the Japanese have been using the word...

I took Japanese in highschool (I can still read and write Japanese fairly well, but my speaking sucks). My Japanese dictionary (from 1995) does not have an entry for boke (ぼ&#12369...

20140726_155028 by J E, on Flickr

20140726_154911 by J E, on Flickr

Bokasu seems to be the closest thing it has - "to blur", basically...

edit
Bokeru - to blur, to become senile - that might be close though.

 

[The_Traveler]

I signed up for amazon kindle unlimited today

To get off topic here.
I've been considering this.
Does one download book or access them on the cloud?
If DLing, is there a limit to how many one can be reading simultaneously?

 

[Derrel]

Read some of the comments about her work here [/video

A number of people are slamming these before and afters for excessively heavy Photoshop work. I totally "get" the idea behind throwing almost the entire person out of focus, but even in a short dose, the effect of a wide-open aperture becomes very tedious to me. It's her method though. I think it's interesting that CreativeLive also prominently features another female shooter who said recently, "As a professional, it's your job to get the BEST-possible pictures for your clients, so don't always shoot wide open...shoot around f/5.6, so you have some depth of field." This from Lou Freeman, only the second woman in the history of Playboy magazine to shoot for that magazine, which has millions of shooters clamoring to be allowed in the door. Lou shot a lot of sets for Playboy, not just one or two. About Lou Freeman Photography

This "Always at f/1.2 " and "Always at f/1.4" business is one of the things that separates older-generation photographers from newer-generation ones: many younger-generation shooters are enamored of wide-open, shallow DOF, and Photoshopping the chit out of skin until it looks plastic.

As to couples shoots: firing off two dozen shots on one pose, to ensure that you get the right focus? Wow. Especially with amateur or "real people" as subjects...wow...that's sacrificing a lot of expressions for the sake of getting shallow DOF. But then again, WTF. It's digital, right? It is possible to shoot,shoot,shoot,shoot, shoot a ton to get one. I mean, it no longer costs the photographer 69 cents or $1.10 per press of the shutter release for film, processing, and proof printing...digitial has made it possible to shoot more. But seriously....taking two DOZEN shots of a couple, just so that maybe one frame is in focus? OMG....that seems so, so undisciplined to me. How about shooting at f/7.1 and getting the f*****g focus right? And thus, being able to select from two dozen GOOD, and in-focus, and usable frames, consistently, set after set?

Of course, she does have a system of using "simple gear" and "saving tons of time in post" (her words, from her CL intro video, not the one above) to get basically, a similar type of shot, over and over and over. And hey, that is her way. But looking at two minutes' worth of her shots, I see it's pretty formulaic, and the results are exceedingly repetitive. It's the SAME, exact "forced" wide-open Canon 35/50/85 L-series look that results when you take the same kind of shots over and over and over on everybody who walks in and you use the same,exact lenses, used at an extreme aperture, on every set you shoot. It's not invalid...it works for her, and she does it her way, but again, to me it looks very formulaic, and lacks diversity of result. I'm tired of over-airbrushed skin, and nothing in focus but the eyes kinda' boudoir.

 

[JustJazzie]

I signed up for amazon kindle unlimited today

To get off topic here.
I've been considering this.
Does one download book or access them on the cloud?
If DLing, is there a limit to how many one can be reading simultaneously?

I just started my trial today, but I downloaded about 6 books off the bat and all showed up on my kindle immediately!

 

[JustJazzie]

Derrel, Thanks for the lesson on Bokeh! You would know all that wouldn't you? :Giggle: Where do you store all that information??

I will have to go check out the comments on the video you posted. I'm still shocked that there were no reviews under 3 stars (until mine)

Very interesting about the advice given on creative live. I really really wish I could watch some of those.

As for the authors work, I pulled up her website and I'm not a fan. She had a few nice shots, but most were- Unimpressive.

 

[Josh66]

Of course, she does have a system of using "simple gear" and "saving tons of time in post" (her words, from her CL intro video, not the one above) to get basically, a similar type of shot, over and over and over. And hey, that is her way. But looking at two minutes' worth of her shots, I see it's pretty formulaic, and the results are exceedingly repetitive. It's the SAME, exact "forced" wide-open Canon 35/50/85 L-series look that results when you take the same kind of shots over and over and over on everybody who walks in and you use the same,exact lenses, used at an extreme aperture, on every set you shoot. It's not invalid...it works for her, and she does it her way, but again, to me it looks very formulaic, and lacks diversity of result. I'm tired of over-airbrushed skin, and nothing in focus but the eyes kinda' boudoir.

It sounds to me like she's just taking a ton of pictures and hoping that one is good enough to use, rather than "doing it right" and selecting the best one from there.

Just keep snapping away till you "get it", instead of actually setting out to "get it" from the beginning.

 

[vintagesnaps]

e.rose I misread your post and I swear I thought at first it said that you choked on her site! LOL Well I guess that tells you where my mind was going and I haven't even actually looked at her site or video yet to get that impression. The so called advice was enough...

Browncoat don't dump all women photographers in with her, it's an insult to those of us who have skills and expertise. And to women like Dorothea Lange, Berenice Abbott, Margaret Bourke-White, Anna Atkins...

 

[JustJazzie]

I have to add this in here. Origionally, when I said " it works for her, her images was great" I was viewing on a small cell phone screen. Looking at it on a larger screen has me retracting my statement.

 

[e.rose]

e.rose I misread your post and I swear I thought at first it said that you choked on her site!

It might as well have said that.

Sent from my iPhone using PhotoForum

 

[Derrel]

bokeru
meaning number 2) blur; fade

The Online Photographer: What Is Bokeh?

 

[Derrel]

My experience is that dogma in regard to matters of photographic technique is not a good approach. Not every situation can be handled with the same,exact approach. Trying to handle every situation with the same,exact set of tools and techniques leads to results that start to look cookie-cutter. Of course, some people might call that working in a "style", or working within a well-defined "niche". Neither of those two things, working in a style or within a well-defined niche, are necessarily a bad thing if people want to PAY MONEY for photos made in that style.

My 1980's university photography mentor always emphasized the difference between having style, and wearing clothing that happened to be "in style".

Here's an example of what being in-style used to mean, during those days: bad 1980's style portraiture + photos of - Google Search