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Details Critique Part 1

So what we're gonna do is we're going through each category that I set out as far as shooting assignments, and we're gonna talk about, you know, every single picture that you guys sent in. And I just want to as a brief disclaimer, if you sent in a picture and you don't see it today, we did have some problems with the way certain pictures were sent in over the email attachments. Some people said the raw files that I couldn't open. Some people sent me the file formats that the computer didn't recognize. Some people sent over corrupt files. Some people sent over files. When I tried to download them, they warned me that there was virus software attached to them. So there we did our absolute best to get every single image opened. But if you don't see yours here, I either didn't get it. I know some people tried to email in pictures that were too big. That bounced back. So if it is not in here, it's not because I'm ignoring you. It's because I simply was not able to get a hold of your image t...

o put it in there. You will see as we go through the images. I ran all of the images through a program that puts the exit data at the bottom of each image. So if you do not see the exit data at the bottom of each image, sometimes you'll see just three or four white dots at the bottom of an image. That means that for whatever reason, when you exported it or uploaded it or sized it or whatever you did before you sent it in, it stripped the exit date out of it. For the most part, that's not. It's not a deal breaker. It's not a problem. It's not going to affect the critique at all. It's just to explain why some have accepted at the bottom and some do not. And also I just want to put out a blanket statement about critique in general from the very beginning that none of this is meant to hurt anyone's feelings and critique is a really difficult thing. I still submit my pictures every single year, two competitions and some do well and some don't and some do well that shouldn't have and some do badly. That should have done well and I get my feelings hurt and nobody wants to hurt anyone say that their images or anything other than 100% fantastic and however it's very helpful and very educational to be told where you are falling short. So are there some pictures that we're going to talk about today that have a lot of issues? Yes, absolutely. On our their pictures that we're going to see their fantastic Yes, absolutely. But I don't want you to think that any critique that I give over the course of today is Mitt with anything other than love, because I'm trying to help you guys get better. So if I give a little tough love, if I sound a little harsh on occasion, it's not meant to be hurtful and it's not meant to dissuade you. So without further ado, I am on slide to of 1896 slides, so we should probably get started. So the first category that I had you guys shoot under is details, and we had a lot of details that were sent in that are pretty much absolutely tremendous. So, for example, a picture like this I have absolutely no critique over a picture like this. This picture is fantastic. It is well exposed. Excellent. Lynn selection. Excellent background selection. Perfect choice of aperture. Everything is in focus. An image like this. You're looking at the exit data. Everything is going right. I eso is great. You know your aperture is your stop is perfect for what you're trying to achieve. Your shutter speed is low, but not too low. This is absolutely doing it right and there are a lot of examples. I mean, a lot of examples, especially under details of images that are creative and well composed and well lit and creatively put together. And to sit around and heavily critique images like these. I don't have a critique over images like these. Every single category we go through, I'm going to step through the images that took all of the instruction that took everything that I sort of laid out and did it perfectly. So these are the images that I think really exemplify growth that are showing creativity are showing strength, are showing excellent technical capabilities. And, you know, I thought very briefly about putting up a slide that says, if you don't see your image in the critique. That means that you've done it right. But I really thought that it would benefit everyone watching to go through each of the images that I thought really exemplified. You know, a good, solid, strong image because I think it's really helpful to see you know everything from doing something really simple with a very simple, clean background, very simple, the interesting detail. A lot of people were trying to shoot the details by making them overly complicated by making them overly fussy. But a lot of time simplicity is what really what really is working. So I just wanted to take the time to really celebrate the people who are, you know, for lack of better words, doing it right. I mean, I feel like there should be like inspirational music playing in the background, but it's been interesting to see in the Facebook group people talking about, you know, posting ring shots and showing their backgrounds and showing the things that they're trying to do and showing progressive growth. And it's really nice to see these images come in that are images that I would be very proud of if I had made myself that I would be thrilled to show to my clients. No, there's just some really beautiful work being done. And hopefully, if we way, we get the chat room up and running. Anybody who has questions will be ableto get them in. But again, I just wanted to take a second and very quickly celebrate, you know, everybody who is really kind of nailing it. And in the details category, this was probably the strongest category of homework assignments that people were turning in, really making intelligent linds choices, people without macro lenses that are finding a way to make it work, working with extension tubes. A lot of people making really intelligent choices with their F stops, really good exposure. I mean, as you can see there, there are a lot of images in the detail category that are just really, extremely well done. I decided to take everyone's names off of their homework. I had a lot of people turn in their homework and say, You know, I don't have permission to show this. Please don't put my name on it or I would prefer for it to be anonymous. I figured the easiest thing all the way around is to just keep all of it anonymous. You know somebody using an extension tube with no Mac. Roland's still doing it right. Doing beautiful work Really interesting, really creative things. Now, if you turn in your image and you did not see it in that brief slideshow of of doing it right, it means that there were some issues, and having issues with the work that you turn in doesn't mean that you're a bad photographer. It doesn't mean that your work is irredeemable. It just means that there are areas in which the images could be improved. And so I broke down the detail images into different categories in the first category that I noticed, was that some people needed a little bit of help in the lighting of their image. For example, this is one thing that I saw often, And if you take a look at this image, if you look at the ring itself, if you look at the center, you realize that the light on it is really nice. It's really even you can really see down into the facets of the diamond. But if you look to the left hand side, that sort of setting on the side. The way the ring is turned towards the light, you get that sort of flat white rectangle, and I noticed that a lot it just simply means that you just need to readjust the angle of the ring so that it is facing the sun or your light source a little bit better and then angle yourself and you can see when you're looking through your camera and you're about to take an image, you take a shot of a macro image or a detail image. Even if you're not using a macro lens, you can see if you're getting that sort of flat rectangle of light on your diamond, and all you have to do is either adjust yourself or adjust the ring. In this case, if they just turn the ring even 1/4 of a centimeter, the light would have hit it more evenly, and you wouldn't have had that issue. Some of the images are were lit it as an example for this one. They were lit, but they were just sort of not lit quite enough. We're either the image ended up overexposed or the light source wasn't strong enough. So for something like this, however, it is lit if it's artificial light. If you got the light a little bit closer to the subject, that would really help it stand out. And otherwise, you know it's it's about a stop under exposed, so it's a combination of not enough light and darkening it down too much. And I talk a lot about bringing your exposure down on images. But if you bring your exposure down without a bright light source to juxtapose that against, then all you end up with isn't under exposed image again a little bit under exposed light, not quite enough. And then we start having images where the light is coming from from different angles and the angles air, not necessarily complimenting what's going on with the actual subject itself. So if you take a look at this, there's a lot of light on the background. There's a lot of light bouncing around in the background, and what that does is it pulls my eye to the background before it pulls my eye to the ring. The sort of right side of the ring is one of the darkest points in the entire frame, and so my eye balances around the background before it actually gets to the ring itself and then light coming from such a strong angle that the light ends up being a distraction to the scene. Instead of ah, welcome addition to the scene, you can see where the light is coming from by looking at the plate and how the shadow falls off of the plate onto. It's kind of, I guess, the wooden tree piece that it's on and then on to the burlap on the side. It's coming from such a strong angle. It's almost skimming across it and making a shadow instead of landing on it and helping illuminate it. So just adjusting the angle of that light, you've got a great idea by having that light coming from an alternate angle, not just coming flat down on it and making it a flat image. But it does have Teoh angle a little differently so that you get texture of light instead of just shadow falling off on the sides and then just kind of flat light like this. You know, we're off on a good start here, but there's not a lot else going on, and when you would you put a ring against a dark background or you put a detail against a dark background? There's nothing really going on here to help separate it from the background. So if you're going with just a very dark background for a detail, if you want to push it against a black background or a dark background, there needs to be some kind of light coming from the background area to help separate the ring or the detail or whatever it is or the person if you're shooting people, if you put somebody against a dark background without a light behind them in some way, they're just going to kind of melt into the background and become part of the background. And that's not, you know, that's not helping your subject. Whatever your subject is, stand out in this image. The light is coming very strongly from underneath the ring. But one of the tricks that I learned and one of the tricks that's kind of always stayed with me. I'm going to talk, to, say, kind of over and over again, prepping images for competition, because when I'm generally critiquing images, it's it's not doing one on one portfolio reviews its critiquing them for, ah, competition such as WPP, I or I'm judging the June bug Best of the best competition this year. So I'm not saying that we're all out here competing with one another. But when I'm prepping my images for a competition or for my portfolio or for a blawg post, and I'm not really sure if I've missed something either in the capture or in the post production, I will actually employ a couple of different tricks so that I can see what might be going on that my eye is not automatically seeing. And one of those tricks is to flip your image upside down. So if you're looking at an image like this, you know you're looking at it like this, literally. Take it in photo shop and turn it upside down. Then look at the image and see where your eye goes automatically. And for me, if I flip an image in my eye automatically goes to a hot spot or a blown highlight or, you know, an area that is way brighter than it should be, then I know that I have a distracting elements in my photographs that is not helping push my eye to the subject. So in this image, when I look at it, the first thing that I see is the bright light underneath the ring instead of the ring itself. So when you have light coming from a source like that idiot, it either needs to be brought down. You know, maybe it's a little too strong. Maybe the light sources on a little too powerful. Maybe your subject is too close to that light source. Maybe it simply needs to be brought down in post just a little bit. But my I shouldn't go to the bright spot. It should go to the subject first. Again. Here's that issue that we talked about really briefly a few images ago of the front part of the diamond, and I'm not a jeweler. I don't know the technical terms to flat front part of your ring. You can see that it's sort of a hazy, flat rectangle. If it had been turned a little bit more towards the camera, you would have had, you would have been able to see the depth into the diamond instead of sort of that flat haze of the light skimming across the diamond again. Here you go. If it's the exact sort of same thing. If you look at the diamonds in the band, the band that has turned towards the camera, you'll see that my my eye and I don't know about you guys. My I go straight to this, this one right here in the 2nd 1 from the top, because it's just a big, flat, white circle. And I feel like in an image like this, my I should go straight to the diamond on the engagement ring and everything else should be secondary. And even if you are trying to push your viewers, I to that wedding band first. Having that distracting kind of flat part of light brings your eye to the part that you don't want it to go to first. So let's say you see this in post in. You're like, Oh, shoot. I didn't see this at all when I was taking the image you condone do a very simple stamp or clone or copy and paste of one of the diamonds onto the other diamond right in this image. You could take this one right here, copy it, paste it and put it on top of that to sort of fix the issue. But I would rather have you guys see it in the very beginning, when you're actually capturing the image so that you don't have to try to fix it in post. And always always, this problem can be fixed by simply readjusting your angle or re adjusting the angle of the actual ring itself. This is a really creative, really smart way to put the scene together. However, the way it's lit, my eye hits the front of the rose first and then the side of the rose next to the ring before finally getting to the ring itself. And again here. This this looks like and I can't be certain, but it looks like it was shot based on the exit data. Looks like it was shot with the existing light in the room or the light in the reception room, the entertainment lighting that was set up. But what you're seeing here is we're seeing a lot of shadow fall off from all of those flowers that are on the cake, right? Like if you look at the cake, you can see the shadows from the light all over, sort of the white parts of the cake. So in a situation like this, even though there is existing light in the space, even though that light will allow you to take a photograph, the light doesn't flatter the scene. So I would suggest for a picture like this, adding in either a video light or a little pop of a very low power flash to help you really eradicate that problem. And again, one more example of the ring being turned just slightly the wrong angle so that you're getting that big, flat, white spot on the front of the ring instead of the depth that you're really going for. Another problem that I saw people having when they were working through their detail images were problems with focus. And I Listen, guys, I get it like I shoot with the macro lens almost every single weekend macro lenses or pains in the butt. They're really hard to get the focus, which is why I almost never use my macro lens on auto focus. I almost always turn it over to manual. It's way easier to manually focus it than it is to point it at a shiny thing and say, Pick this one point of this shiny thing and have that being focused, I would rather manually focus it myself. And then I know I've got it. So a lot of the images when I'm when I'm looking at them, for example, this image here, the band in the background, is in focus, and the ring itself is not in focus. Or more often than not, the problem that I was seeing is just slightly missed focus. So this is a great image is a really clever compositional idea. But the ring is not in focus, not the prongs, not the diamond. Parts of the pearls are in focus, like if you look at it right here, is in focus and kind of over here isn't focused, but this is not in focus. So it was either a focus and recomposed that didn't work that sort of mist or it was just simply miss focus. And there is Listen, there's nothing wrong with this. This happens all the time. I still even manually focusing get images that don't quite hit, but it's realizing that you've kind of missed it, and there's nothing wrong if you take the image of zooming in on the LCD of your camera to take a look and be like, Did I get this because you've got a lot of shiny stuff going on there and you're focusing on a very little piece of it, using a Mac Roland's, which has a very narrow plain of focus anyhow, sometimes you miss it. There's nothing wrong with zooming in and making sure you've nailed it before moving on. And then there were some images that were just sent in where and again, if the maker is watching this, I'm not trying to hurt your feelings. Nothing isn't focused. Not the foreground, not the background. You know, if I looked into this, one, part of the leaves were in focus, but it just it looks like it was either a focus and recomposed that just missed or just missing focus. You see the kind of six or seven little dots down at the bottom. I would love to have tried to figure out what was going on by extrapolating from looking at the exit data, but for whatever reason, with when this image was exported or resized or Sinton or whatever, the exit data was stripped out, so I wasn't able to tell what was going on. Um, as far as I could tell, there's just miss focused. Nothing is in focus. Um, parts of the front of the ring sort of in the this flat area up here. This isn't focused. The diamonds are not in focus, not in focus. Ah, lot. I'm not really sure how it happened because I'm looking at 100 millimeter lens at 1/100 of a second. It looks like motion blur, or it's just out of focus. It looks like when I was looking at this closely, some of this is in focus, but none of this is in focus, not in focus, not focus again. It's it's I'm not saying these things to hurt your feelings at all. I you know, when I very first entered competition back in 2000 five or 2006 I entered three or four images into WPP. I print comp, and based on the scores that I received, I was a below average photographer and for about five minutes I got my feelings hurt and I stomped around and I was like, What do they know? The clients loved these images, whatever. I'm never entering this again. And then I sat down and said, OK, a panel of six people who have been doing this longer than I have looked at my images and all of them agreed that something needed to be improved. Maybe instead of getting my feelings hard, I should sit down and listen to what they had to say and see if there's anything from the critique that I could use to improve my photography. And once I got past getting my feelings hurt, which is a totally natural thing. When somebody says that they're issues with your images, I realized that they did have a lot of really valid points, and then it helped me improve my photography. And every single time I watch a competition judging every single time I watch a portfolio review, there's something that I can take away and used to improve my work. So if I'm telling you, you know, in this image here, this is in focus. But the ring is not in focus. That's something that you can constructively take away and take back the next time that you go shooting and say, Okay, I have a problem with front focusing. I have a problem with back focusing, and that's not a problem. That's just an area that you need to improve on. And I still now have areas that I need to improve on. There's something wrong with that. You know, photography is an art form. We're always learning it, and we are always looking to improve it. So if I put your image up like, for example, this, it's just not in focus, right? Good composition, you know, very well thought out. Good texture, good good lines not in focus. So big deal, you know, take that insight ups. It wasn't in focus and then go work harder on that next time. This isn't meant to make all of you guys cry at 9 30 in the morning. We're only slides in. We've got a long way to go. But I really wish that at, you know, one year into my business are two years into my business. Somebody had sort of taken a hatchet to my portfolio and told me the cold, hard truth about what I was doing wrong. Instead of what I wanted to hear. I feel like I would have gotten a lot better. A lot faster. Even if you're a professional working for 20 years, you always critique your work, right? You never really never stopped, correct? Oh, no, we never stop. And I have actually two loops of feedback that I used to improve my own work. First of all, I should stuff to my husband, who is also a wedding photographer. And sometimes I'll come home from a wedding and I'm like, I didn't really good job at this wedding. Take a look at this wedding and he'll look at it and be like, What do you do with your flash here? And I'm like, Oh, you're right. Like you're right. I kind of There was something that I did wrong. I should have noticed that my biggest feedback loop comes with sidecar post the people who do my post production and we check in every couple of weddings. And I say, you know, what are you seeing? A my getting Because I don't edit my own work. I call the work down. But I'm not doing the day to day editing where a lot of the big problems really will reveal themselves. So general, tell me and you guys will get toe. See Jen. She's coming next month to do workflow critiques because she's excellent at that. But she'll come back and she'll say So Listen, you're getting kind of sloppy with your compositions, or I'm noticing that when you're shooting at 14 you're focusing and re composing a lot. You're starting toe, you're starting to get sloppy. And for me, it's not making huge technical mistakes because I've been I've been learning this for so long. It's getting complacent, Social say, You know, you're doing a lot of focusing and re composing. At 1.4, you're having some issues, and I'm like, Oh, you're right. I totally I'm doing that. I need to stop doing that. So no matter how long you've been doing this, you should always have some sort of loop of feedback in some way. Whether it's human, a buddy critique each other's work, I highly recommend, if you would like your marriage to say awesome, you and your husband don't critique each other's work because I love my husband very much. But he is a very He's a very no holds barred, very tell it like it is critique ER and he'll look over my shoulder and he'll be like, I don't like that and that still does hurt my feelings. But I would rather him look over my shoulder and say, I don't like that or that doesn't work then all baby, Yeah, that's a really good image and then go back to his desk and say That's not a good image But I didn't have the nerve to tell her that, right? Like I if he's watching, which he very well might be, I do appreciate his incredible, blunt honesty. Even if I don't always take it as well as one. Shouldn't I get my feelings hurt, too? I mean, I dio I still, you know, I enter stuff in a competition that gets bad scores on. I get my feelings hurt, and sometimes it's just because the image went up in front of the wrong panel of judges and they didn't get it or they didn't like it or they've seen too many images that were like it. Like, this is all subjective, completely so, yeah, so maybe it's a good thing that we don't have the chat room up so people can tell me how much they're out at me right now, but again, working through trying to get through these detail images, you know, there were a bunch of images where the focus was just lacking, and sometimes because the exit data was stripped out, I couldn't tell exactly why. But like, for example, of 56 at 300 millimeters. Yes, I know it's not a Mac, Roland. It doesn't have to be a macro lens, but the focus still slid, and it's just soft now. Sometimes if you're starting to realize over and over and over again that your focus is soft, but you're doing everything right with your settings. Maybe it's not you. Maybe there's something wrong with your limbs, and that is a totally possible thing, you know, especially if you've had the lens for a while. Maybe you dropped it. Maybe it got banged around in your camera bag. Maybe it's not as calibrated calibrated as well as it had been. You might need to get your lens check looked at. Maybe it's not you. So if you are having the same sort of like focusing problems over and over and over again and you're like but I'm doing everything right. Get your lens checked, you know? But sometimes, for example, like this image an 80th of a second F four. The entire ring is not in focus, but the entire ring is not going to be in focus at four. It's just not, um, when you're shooting something like a an engraving, right? Like you can see that the engraving on the cake server sort of turned away from us, shooting it at 35 No matter what lens you're shooting it with, it could be a 72 200. It could be an 85. It could be a 24 to 70. It's not going to all be in focus. It's too low. 35 is not going to get the entire engraving and focus when the engraving is turned away from you. You know what, 85 millimeters. I would have shot this at nine to get the entire engraving on the cake server in focus 71 which is great. It's a great starting point, but because the ring is tilted up and away, it's not all in focus. Even 71 you know, on a macro lens, it's 105. I'm gonna assume that's the macro. You know, even at 71 you can have something and focus down here. And this isn't and focus if it's turned away because of that really narrow plain of focus because of the magnification minute, A magnification of the Mac. Roland. So you just have to be really careful with that. You know, just basic simple focus problems. Stuff that soft one prawn and focus. But other problems not in focus again. At 45 you've got some in and some out That's just gonna happen at 4571 But it's it's in focus up here, right? But as you come up into this, it's in focus kind of down here, but not up here. It's just soft, you know, excellent composition. Excellent thought ring. Not in focus. You know, it's just soft and again this goes to show that even it f you can still be out of focus