Hi, it's me again, I know I post a lot, Sorry .
I guess I'm not the only one who didn't study photography or worked his way up through being an assistant, I just went with what I thought look right, 9 month now since I started and I really don't know what to think of my port and style since I'm so involved in my own work.
I do like lots of shadows when I know other togs stay clear of them especially for high fashion or its extremely soft or maybe I'm wrong about that too... do you think my lighting works although it may differ from yours!
weather your a model or a tog let me know if you like what you see and a why would be great but your impression only is appreciated too.
www.studioio.co.uk  (not fixed yet).
sorry to have to mention this but it happened last time, Although I'm certainly not fishing for compliments here but please don't sound like your enjoying putting people down and it's giving you satisfaction for your own reasons, I do take critique well and I'm always gratefull for it if it's done with etiquette, thanks a lot

P.s I made my first attempt today at making my own defused lighting kit and I'm to test it on a great looking model (if she turns up)..really can't wait.

Personally, I like the look of your portfolio as a whole.
Never have been a lover of the selective colour thing but sometimes it does work and is down to personal preference.
As far as I can see from the shots here, The lighting looks good and quite natural which is an effect I like.
Some of the shots are a bit darker where they need to emphasise a certain part of the shot.
Just beware of overblown highlights which will draw your eye away from the subject you are shooting.
For the amount of time you have been doing this, I would say you are doing great.
I have been shooting this kind of photography for just about a year now and am only just getting to grips with the lighting myself.
But in all I think you are doing well and will progress forward.
Just remember to try and get that little bit better with every shoot you do.

This shot works well for me.  Your diffuser works as shown by the soft edges of the shadows.  This shot works because the warmth, rich colours, pose and hair give it an atmosphere and a sense of trying to elicit and achieving  a reaction such as "I know what this shot means".

It is better than anything else you have up at the moment.  Well done.

it's a good advice KT there were quite a few occasions where I had seriouse proplems with recovering overblown areas where there were completley no colour data and it does draw the attention, I'm getting better at trying to defuse it a little more and at getting camera settings right.
thank you sandy, it was just an example shot of the shadowy effects. but good to know it works, I used a single soft box nothing else..I did over think that shoot and in the end I thought just keep it simple use a single light which luckily worked for this one but not others. thank you for the feed back. lol I know now its not all...well messt up :).

Not bad overall.I tried putting my hand over the picture to cut out most of the blue bikini girls legs.Ie cropped just below the thong strap.For me this looks better.The nude i think would work better in b and w   as i found the colours very distracting. The headshot with the vignette i think the edges are slightly too far in, ie make the circle bigger.Overall though not bad.


Regards Paul


www.glossypinklipstick.co.uk
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GlossyPinkLipstick , Photographer  posted on 01/07/2010 22:57:33   Posted 276 times

Located:Harlow,Essex, UK
Member Since: 12/10/2008

Hi Paul, Thank you for the feed back as I'm interested in negative critique more than positive ones and yours were specific and Valid, will take it on thanks.

To answer your question - your lighting is inconsistent - but then again you do have a lot of different styles in your current port. A few of your shots have blown highlights, a larger number are underexposed (check the histograms to see), but more generally the lighting can be a little flat at times. A quick play with levels and curves in PS would help existing photos.

Quoting post from danjpope
To answer your question - your lighting is inconsistent - but then again you do have a lot of different styles in your current port. A few of your shots have blown highlights, a larger number are underexposed (check the histograms to see), but more generally the lighting can be a little flat at times. A quick play with levels and curves in PS would help existing photos.

Hi Danjpop, how are you?
yep you are right some areas gives me 255 x3 reading especially where the models were sweating around the makeup area but thats the price I pay for having on camera high contrast effect not accomplishable in PS, I normally go to curves and select points with the colour picker to mark points in the curves line then adjust but maybe I should do it to a greater effect-do you ever wonder about your monitor and how different it will look on others no matter how much colour calibration you do!. regarding the flatness that's due to two reasons,(1) I have a set of three lights and I use 2 mostly for the actual model and third one either hair or background light-I should make couple of reflectors!, 2 I got 2 lenses the better one is the canon 50mm f1'8 which is a wide fixed lens and with the size of my studio I have to go all the way to the back and ask the model to stand near the background to get as much as possible...not blaming it on equipment but its a bit limiting. I modified my equipment yesterday into a simi beauty dishes and waiting to try them and see how it looks so this maybe a change in the right direction-not sure yet-I may use a combination of defused simi beauty dish and a hard light. thank you for the feed back, by the way I'll be holding you to that offer you made me don't think I've forgotten..just doing a million thing at the moment. thanks for the critique

Hi,

Regarding the 'flatness', unless I read your last post wrong, it seems like you have a large number of lights in a small space - the light must be bouncing all over the place.

I don't know if you do already, but you might want to consider more flagging of the lights or perhaps using some boards to restrict/shape the light and drop a few and replace the fill with a reflector for the beauty work. 

I do a little work in post but I try and get it right in camera first. Typically I shoot the first few tethered (the back of my camera is rubbish) and then once happy - it doesn't have to be perfect - I can just crack on. I have tried doing the whole shoot tethered and whilst useful I did find it very slow as everyone wanted to keep checking the screen and comment!

I used to shoot tethered but its almost impossible to keep the model from sneaking looks at the screen and me clicking the button when she just looked away so I stopped, actually you were right to think the light may bounce everywhere but with the shape of the lights it surprisingly doesn't its perfect and the width of the studio is just about enough, I would do with more space though for the sake using a better lens but overall it just about enough.

I like this photo a lot and its lighting
am I right to think you used a large octopus shaped soft box or an umbrella to the top right on a 45 degree angle roughly from her? or was there a fill light to the left as well or a reflector?

Glad you liked those ones, although to be honest I was really rushed (I literally had 10 mins to capture the whole look) so the light wasn't quite as good as I wanted. In this case it was pretty much my normal set up of one 16" (I think) beauty dish on a 600w Profoto head high centre-right of camera, (the catch lights in the top right hand photo should give you an idea of roughly where it was placed), and in this case because I had a dark grey background and dark clothes, I used a small light on the background bottom right of camera from the side inwards (I should have had it directly behind but the stage was too low etc etc) for separation. Didn't use any reflectors.

These days I typically shoot one light with the model in a white cove - model close to the wall for a white background and shadow, further back from wall for the grey. I normally use a 70-200 f2.8L. I have shot the same with a 50mm 1.8 and an 85mm 1.8 - theu're great don't knock them -but it got knackering edging backwards and forwards at waist height to crop!! I loooove the 85mm lens, cheap and awesome. In fact I think the photo set you copied here was the 85mm.

Hope all's well.

Dan

You know if I'm shooting for a designer a fashion line I probably shouldn't shoot it any other way than how you do it if I had the equipment and experience, it can not look more professional than this for a studio look, but for me I really don't want to ever shoot like that as I feel it's cold, impersonal and very superficial-and that's not because of your individual style or photography, your doing it how its expected to be shot and better and I think you get ten out of ten for executing the task so its not your failings in my eyes and it may not be failings at all its just that fashion look. I don't know if its just me but that's how they make me feel. I did yesterday a shout and said your work is inspirational and it is especially with how polished they look, they have that wao factor but upon a closer look it gives me the emotions that I mentioned earlier-which are funny enough words used to describe high culture and high fashion-very fake, cold and snobbish but very sophisticated at the same time, I also said its inspirational without altering to nudity but I regretted saying that because it didn't convey what it really meant; nudity is simply beautiful and its who we are but I said it exactly because of that as it gives advantage over an image that is equally well executed photo but you managed to give it that first wao factor without that advantage, sorry I know you didn't ask for a critique of your work but I was thinking of my stumbling direction (lighting style wise) and where I like to go with it in contrast with a perfect example of perfect fashion style shooting. hope you wont interpret this is an attack on you; this is what it is: lets say if I was lost looking for home and you kindly tell me this is the way home then I respond by saying no this is a very nice looking path but it leads me to your home and not mine and I would be more lost if I follow it..but for me to know this is not the way home I have to look at it and examine it before I reject it and I may even take a few steps in it, hope that made sense and maybe I'm talking a lot of rubbish at 2am and maybe I will follow your direction in the future if I'm ever to make a name for myself I don't know but as it stands that's what this eccentric little tog here thinks .the photo below where you experimented and I think you went with your style rather than (shoot safe for fashion-one lighting set up fit for all) and it is simply stunning and managed to escape those emotions although it maybe very well be the same lighting set up as the others but with the low shutter speed you changed it completely.
Also I like to add the white background contributes hugely to the coldness of the photos where the other photos with warmer/darker background are a lot less cold and adds more elegance somehow but at the same time doesn't draw the attention to the model or product as much as the white BG as its less contrasting.

Dude, you're right I'm not putting myself up for critique, however I understand that analysing my work helps you to articulate what you want to say and to discover how you feel about your own work, so that's cool. The second set of shots you picked was just experimenting, same lighting set up but the shutter speed set to 2.5 secs. Was loads of fun trying to get it right - lots of trial and error.

For what it's worth, my portfolio on NetP is aimed at fashion and fashion modelling with a view to magazine editorial. It works and and as you point out there are certain styles of shooting that are typical for magazines; although equally the room for creativity is boundless. That is just one aspect of my work, I do many different types of shoot; candid, portraiture, travel, wedding etc, but I don't show it here because it would confuse my portfolio page - which is in effect my 'shop window'. I use Flickr for my other work.

I get the impression (again excuse me if it's wrong) that you are looking to find your comfort zone/home style and that is reflected in the diversity of your portfolio page. I guess it all depends on what you want to achieve and how you want to grow/learn. It also depends on what you want your portfolio pages to do for you - for some it is a showcase for their varied work (hence planes, cars etc), for others it is a shop window, for others just a business card to let people know they're here. My only suggestion is just to do what you like, experiment the hell out of stuff and see what works best for you. At the end of the day, if you're doing it commercially/editorially, all that matters is what the client thinks, if you're doing ti for yourself it really doesn't matter what I or others think, but the advantage of sites like this is that people are willing to share tips and tricks they've learned along the way that can help you pick a quicker path. That's not the same necessarily as critiquing. There are some great photographers on here. I particularly like Barone and Chris Riccio's ports on here amongst several others; but that's my thing. Photography is fun, enjoy.

Regards

Dan 

Thanks for being cool about my last post :).
although I used the term lost but it was just a hypothetical example, it's very easy to emulate but I like to experiment and I needed to see how others see it and where I can go from there, but yeah photography is fun and very addictive to both photographers and models alike and everyone here is an addict. I was really glad to know you do other styles as well and I understand now what you mean by Shop (very simple and smart).
The names you mentioned are really good photographers, love their work.
Talk soon.

Ali

Hi

There is never a right or a wrong way to take an image.  You just need to practise and through this you will develop your own style.  It is good to look at other peoples work but at the end of the day you do not want to produce a copy.  An image is personal and one person might love it while another one hates it.

Best Wishes
Alaina

Alaina

BA (Hons) PhotoMedia; LBIPP; LMPA.

Quoting post from Alaina
Hi

There is never a right or a wrong way to take an image.  You just need to practise and through this you will develop your own style.  It is good to look at other peoples work but at the end of the day you do not want to produce a copy.  An image is personal and one person might love it while another one hates it.

Best Wishes
Alaina

Alaina

BA (Hons) PhotoMedia; LBIPP; LMPA.

Hi.
first statement is false-there are many right ways and there are many wrong ways but there isn't one way.second and third-not sure why you felt you had to mention something beyond obvious sepecially if you read the previous posts .last statement isn't adequate to describe professional photography by photographers-I think.glad didn't spend a few grands on a course.
Best Regards
Ali

Sorry you feel like that!  You need to think out of the box and perhaps you will be able to produce professional images.

Alaina

BA (Hons) PhotoMedia; LBIPP; LMPA.

What is this box ?

your right, alaina, I will try, love your work.
when did you upload this?

I did this one a few weeks back-it was just for fun not for photography.

Looks like your both thinking in the same box.