EXPOSURE

Ansel Adams developed The Zone System decades ago as a reference for talking about exposure levels. It still applies today to digital images. Learn it, live it, love it:

—> The Zone System

CRUSHED BLACKS

Do you have a lot of crushed blacks in your images? Does it look like you’re forcing underexposure in post?

Wikipedia wrote:
A photograph may be described as underexposed when it has a loss of shadow detail, that is, the dark areas indistinguishable from black, known as “blocked up shadows” (or sometimes “crushed shadows,” “crushed blacks,” or “clipped blacks,” especially in video).

reference: Exposure Settings

You’re Asking For A Critique, But We Can’t See The Image Through Your Retouching

Photographers: Show the “camera original” images without retouching or processing of any kind so we can give you a relevant critique. Less Photoshop, more getting it right in the camera. If you’re a beginner or even intermediate, show us what you’re really getting, not what your polished or redefined images look like.

Retouchers: Show both the original image and the retouched version. This saves critics from asking a lot of questions before they can really respond.

Lighting In The Field

Your artificial light on the subjects often clashes with the natural light in the background. Work on blending your light sources. Sometimes that can be setting up another flash in the background to light up a tree, but usually it means less artificial light, setting what is on the model to only one stop brighter than the environmental sources.

Why?

The big question is “why.” What were you trying to communicate to the viewer? Does there seem to be a clear message or feeling or mood? Are there are too many distractions and is there no real subjective focus in the compositions?

Bad Styling Choices for Women With Curves

So many people on MM say they love women with curves and want to show their beauty, but then they dress them up in things that would look so much better on skinny teenagers. This is the lipstick on a pig approach. It isn’t flattering, it isn’t creative, and it really doesn’t celebrate what makes them beautiful. Instead of trying to “fix” the person with accessories, if you really want to celebrate them, photograph what is really in front of you. Tell the truth with your images and it will set you free.

Make A Decision And Move In Or Move Back

Either back away from your subject and use their bodies as an element in the composition, or close to point blank range and make their bodies the composition. Make a decision and carve the lines of your image from contrast and color. Take possession of the viewer’s perspective and communicate.

Think of a photo shoot as war, and remember that photography, like all art, is all about editorial choices. Either you’re in the trenches on the front lines, or you’re at headquarters planning the larger operation. The supply lines are important, but that’s not where you want to be if you’re going to be a photographer, because there is no opportunity to edit in that middle ground, it is stagnant space.

Your Entire Portfolio Should Be Trashed

Do you seem to be relying on a lot of cheap tricks, like simple Photoshop effects and props, but failing on lighting and communication, which are the most important things in any image?

If your camera is on an automatic mode, switch it to manual control. Get back to basics: look up information on The Zone System, learn about depth of field, and stop “setting up” shoots and just go photograph life for a while. I tell models this a lot: don’t pose, just be. So, to beginning photographers, don’t stage the action, just capture it. Concept is less important than tension and balance.

Until you’ve gotten some level of control over lighting and contrast levels, you shouldn’t be trying to plan anything that isn’t going on inside the camera. Master the tools, then build your vision.

A Composite Of Two Images Looks Like It’s Still Two Frankensteined Images

The foreground and the background should not clash to a point where the viewer loses their willing suspension of disbelief.

This is a common issue with fantasy images shot on a blue screen or green screen.

Make your composite as seamless as possible.

Make sure the shadows line up, make sure the color temperature is in sync, and make sure the model’s expression fits with the environment you want to put them into.

Most professional 3D rendering software lets you pick a lens to simulate. Set your virtual lens to be the same as your physical lens so the perspective is the same. Think about rendering the virtual background to match the actual photograph, rather than shooting a foreground element to go with an existing background element. Most digital cameras record your focal length in EXIF data stored inside the image file (go to the “File Info” panel in Photoshop and look for “camera data”). The virtual set is a lot easier to manipulate than an already shot real world image.

Try to master capturing real world images before you start playing with virtual sets and green screens, it is a lot easier to do all that if you have the real world camera fundamentals down to a science.

The models really need good direction more than ever when they can’t actually see their environment. It is also not a good idea to do this sort of thing with inexperienced models, they are fighting nerves in the first place and this sort of virtual world setup just makes it so much worse.

Use good judgment and don’t rush into a composting project if you don’t already have a firm grasp of the practical aspects of photography.

Scale Back Your Short-Term Ambitions

You’re trying to run before you can crawl. Shoot more, but it doesn’t have to be with models. Go out to a street fair, boat show, or something and shoot a crowd in daylight. You need to learn how to tell stories in one shot, and the best way to do that is to practice as much as possible and not worry about controlling too much beyond the camera. The hardest thing in the world to learn about photography is how to truly record what is right in front of you. Capture, don’t stage. Use your legs, not your zoom. You can stage once you know what you want.

The best lens for practicing like this is a 50mm prime (or 40mm on a cropped frame sensor). It’s the lens that best matches the human eye’s perspective, and therefore the easiest way to learn. If you’re looking at the world through a fish-eye or a telephoto lens, it is harder to learn composition, because it’s less natural for us.

Go out and deal with life and chaos, so you then know how to simulate it better. It’s like “write what you know” for photographers. You have to do your research.

Tell A Story In One Shot

A lot of people look at old Hollywood glamour portraits and say “I want to do that,” but they fail to realize that the actresses were smiling at their fans in the shots. If your model doesn’t already have fans, then what are you really creating? It’s very self-indulgent and not useful to you as an artist to just do that. That’s not really the material you need to look at if you want to create compelling images. Don’t just look at the glamour portraits, watch the movies. Pause the movies at important moments to study the compositions, make your images deeper than a model just looking at the lens all deer in headlights or a trollop gazing at a financial statement.

“I Can’t Find Beautiful Models Who Don’t Flake”

So shoot guys. Or horses. If you’re in a small community, once you’re doing good work of any sort you’re going to have people coming to you sooner or later. Just shoot.

Sometimes the significant others of beautiful women have a lot of insecurities and don’t want to share what they have. It’s immature and often quite ridiculous, but it happens a lot, and you can’t blame people for feeling insecure. Often both people in the relationship have to trust you.

You should really be focusing on your skills rather than a professional portfolio right now. Don’t try to be a rock star on day one, just be yourself and be a part of your community. You need the support more than anything else. Do what you need to do to be able to practice as much as possible, and socialize with bystanders while you’re doing it.

Runway

Rule #1: Always shoot runway shows with a monopod.

For NY Fashion Week / Milan Fashion Week I usually pack a 16-50mm f2.8 for backstage work, a 50-135mm f2.8 for most runways, and a 200mm f2.8 for long runways. However, I shoot Pentax and all of my dSLR cameras have a cropped frame sensor, so I get some magnification of the lens effect going on.

I’m the editor at an online fashion magazine and my runway team members who shoot with Canon lenses on full frame cameras favor the 70-200mm f2.8 and f4 models (L series?) for most shows, and a 300mm or 400mm for extremely long runways. That’s with shake reduction turned off, it interferes with autofocus when the camera is on a monopod.

I bring a flash just in case the designer goes absolutely nuts with insufficient lighting (only happened on one big show ever, the entire room was reflective black marble), but I only use it when absolutely necessary. If you see the house photographer mount a flash, follow suit. Otherwise keep it for backstage work. If you have 400 photographers in the press pit shooting with a flash, nobody is going to get good shots, because all the flashes will be overlapping and causing overexposure. If you watch fashion shows on TV or in movies you’ll notice they insert a flash “effect” to make the action more dynamic, but it’s really rare to see a professional runway photographer shooting a runway show with a flash, the Italians would beat the crap out of them.

I try to shoot runway at f4 1/500th ISO 400, but sometimes I have to go out to f3.5 1/250th ISO 800. A larger aperture will make your depth of field too small to focus on moving models, a slower shutter will lead to obvious motion blur, and higher ISO just doesn’t look as good.

If a show is in a nightclub or you look above the press pit and there aren’t at least 3000 watts worth of light punching down the runway, all bets are off.

Basic Composition

All the main focal points are in the center of your image, so in composition terms there is no reason to have the 50% or more of the image not in the immediate center. You should change the crop so you have clear compositional lines. This is a common problem in many of your images, you center your focal points in either one or two dimensions, making them inherently non-compelling. Symmetrical ain’t sexy. Google “rule of thirds” for more information.

Getting The Shot With Beginner Models

The photography is fine, but the model’s expression just dilutes the whole thing. He or she isn’t selling the shot. It seems to be a problem in a lot of your images, the models don’t know what to do. Work on your connection with the talent and try to improve how you direct them. It all gets lost if the subject is not compelling.

It’s technically and artistically strong, but you feel unsatisfied.

There are four basic universal concerns for artists:

A) Is it technically strong?
B) Dose it communicate to the viewer?
C) Is it profitable?
D) Is it satisfying?

If money isn’t a concern, it sounds like you have A+B+C but it’s not satisfying you to continue to create the same sort of work currently in your portfolio. If that is so, what do you enjoy and not enjoy about your process? What images by others inspire you which you don’t feel you’re approaching in skill level? How do you define progress right now? What do you want to create that you think you cannot or have not? Are there things that you feel are holding you back?

One way of breaking out of the holding pattern is to do something that scares you. Shoot with a 5 watt night light, steal a paperclip from someone and take 500 pictures of it before giving it back, be the model and spend a couple hours doing a study of yourself with no one else in the room, black out your camera screen and use a light meter to figure out your exposure, hire a prostitute to hold the reflector, skydive with a semi-valuable vintage camera, or intentionally shoot something so trashy your family would disown you if they saw it. Basically, take a leap without looking. Break the rules. When nothing feels right, change the universe.