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Reception Party Critique

amazing job critique ET to the 1800 photographs. That's and that's a great number. And I think my favorite part about it was that it seems like a lot of photographers are making the same mistakes. And so you were able to identify those narrow him down. So headroom. That's probably the number one right. I was saying in the Facebook group that now everyone assumes that any space at the top of the frame is too much head room like people are posting images and they're like, Oh, headroom, Listen, just because you've got space at the top that's extraneous doesn't mean that it's wasted space. It's how it's what that space is adding or not adding to the frame. Sometimes it's dead space. Sometimes it's a beautiful element that's helping push your eye to the subject. Not all space at the top of a frame needs to be eradicated. So, for instance, the portrait of the woman, the bride single bride with the but bubbles and the wait is almost nothing there. But it really drew your eye. Exactly exactly,...

and somebody posted an image in the Facebook group, but I can't remember who it was that was like headspace, but it was just beautiful foliage up above the bride's head. It was fine. That's fine. That's not too much headspace. When I'm talking about is is wasted space, and there's a big difference between empty space that helps tell your story and just wasted space. Perfect. All right, well, let's have a party. Yes, let's So reception pictures are sometimes very difficult to dio, but there are so many beautiful images and just to pause just to give a brief bit of note to my single favorite image of the entire everything that everyone has sent in, this is hands down my favorite image. I just want to applaud the maker. This is so flawlessly perfect. I wish it was mine. It's fantastic, so well done. But we have a lot of images from a lot of different types of receptions in a lot of different lighting, sonar CEOs and a lot of bizarro moments that are working really, really well. You know, whether it's trying for a different type of light or God knows what's happening here or here this great moment. You know, people were really doing some really simple to really elaborate, but really beautiful reception work. You know, sometimes it's just a simple portrait. Sometimes it's a dude flying in the air. Sometimes it's just people dancing. But there was a lot of really wonderful work. However, that said, there are some images that would have been really that would really benefit from a few different tweaks. One of those would be composition, you know, and I'm not gonna say head safe. They're not gonna say bottom states not to say anything like that. But you're way too high above your subject in this frame. You know, there's no need to stand up above them like this unless it helps tell the story. And in this case, it's just simply distracting. If you were just standing on the same level as the bride and groom in this image, you would have been just fine. But you're going to know what I'm going to stay here. This is headspace, and this is, you know, way too much space going on at the top of the frame. That isn't helping to tell the story. The other thing that would have benefited the image would have benefited from a tighter crop, because then you would crop out the, um, truck car thing over there. So if you came in, if you just readjusted yourself over a little bit came in here, came down to here and move yourself so that the car came a little more to your side, then you would be able to eliminate that in the final image. You know, get down a little bit lower. You don't need so much floor in this picture. You need more guy in this picture. And again, we've talked about this kind of before shooting up on people. In this instance, You want to hit the floor with this guy cause this guy's on the floor. But in this image or on the floor, shooting up, which is which just makes your subject appear elongated, tighter crop would eliminate the kind of out of focus guy to the left. There, tighter crop would have really focused in on this woman and eliminated the distractions on either side. You know, I don't I don't mean to be hurtful, but I don't know what this is. This isn't an image of anything. I can't tell what's happening. I don't see faces. I don't see arms. I don't see movement. Um, it's just a I don't know what it is. Tighter crop. You know what? You would be able to see the little girl's face a little bit better, slightly tighter, either tighter crop or looser crop, because you're cutting the guys off that at the Cavs while having extraneous space at the top. So if you use that space at the top and brought it down to the bottom so that you could see their feet, then you would have a better composition headspace. You gotta back up because you've got a lot of floor space down here. But then you're cropping off the guy on the left who is doing this great thing with his arms. You need to back up a little bit. You know, this is a really, really good attempt, but it's a little It's a little under exposed, and if you stood up a little bit more so that you were shooting, you were not shooting up on people quite as much. It would have been much more impactful. Tighter crop. This is close. This is really getting there. This is something kind of interesting, but it's crops, you know, kind of in an odd way, it's got a little bit of a tilt. My I first goes to this dude's head right here, and then it goes over here to the dark space over here. I almost want to see it as a vertical or a square cropping closer. This is fantastic. Crop the bottom off, crop the sides off and you've got a really nice image right there. You know, sometimes being up, shooting down on people, you need to get a little bit more on their level. You know, not really sure what's going on here. I'm not sure what the story is. Is that the two gentlemen at the dueling pianos? Or is it the dance floor? Because I'm not getting a sense of of story based on how it's composed, you know, Crop in a little bit more. Not sure, you know. Maybe the groom was sitting in the other chair, but it's just sort of empty space that isn't helping to tell the story crop in This is headspace that is not helping. And also, if the photographer had taken two steps to the right, he would have eliminated or she would have eliminated the clapping gentleman that's blocking the face of the person holding the bride. You know, this is this is bad composition. The person in the front on the bottom left is out of focus. The person and the right is cut off of the jaw. It's just a very awkward crop crop in. You know, you don't need this over here. You don't need this up here. Get closer. Got to get closer headspace again. If you took this space that's up here and put it down here, then we wouldn't have people cropped off of the legs in an awkward fashion. This this is somebody's but right. You don't need this crop this year and then you're good. You know, I'm not sure what's going on here. The little girl's not in focus, but the dollar bills are and focus. So I'm not sure if it's a story of a little girl Or is it a story of the dollar bills on the ground? I can't really tell compositionally you've pushed the groom all the way into the corner off the frame. If you'd loosened up just a little bit, he wouldn't have been jammed to the side of the frame the way he waas crop tighter crop much tighter. Got to back up a little bit. You've got the woman cut off at the wrist, and then the bride cut off at the shoulders crop. There's, Ah, whole half of a person over here to the right side of the frame that's just blowing out the right side of the frame crop closer. This is an example of extraneous headspace that doesn't help tell the story crop closer and closer and closer. You've got people cut off at the waist over here. This space needs to be over here. You have extraneous window over here, but you don't have the whole woman over here. Crop tighter, much tighter, much tighter. Crop tighter. The great moment and tighter. There's a lot going on in this scene, but it is wide angle and it's coming from above and its shooting down, and it's distorting head that I'm not sure what's going on. Different crop, you know, he's on the ground in front of her. I can tell he's trying to bite the garter that's up on her leg, but the angle that the photographer is coming out, it makes it really hard to see. So again, we're also going to revisit Lynn selection. You know, with the 35 millimeter here, not only is the groom's eyes closed, which has nothing to do with the Lin selection, but they've opened up. So why that now? They've got a random guy in the corner just standing on the stage, sort of creeping on them. You know, if they had come down and crop that guy out, maybe the 35 would have worked. You know, if you just took this whole scene and went crap this guy out, crop that guy out, then you have a much tighter photograph. Wide angle, vertical wide angle, vertical. It's just not flattering, you know, It stretches out the scene. It makes it look a little unreal. Got a really nice moment, kind of distorted by a wide angle lens. You know, just the same kind of wide angle issue that we've been talking about the entire time. And then you have issues like you can't shooting dancing with an 85 millimeter at 1.4. Not a single thing in that picture is and focus. And this is that f 10. But there's no reason for it to be at F 10. You've got this woman and focus who isn't helping tell the story. This woman in focus whose cropped off by his hand and then it's just curtains. You don't need to be shooting it F 10. In a scenario like this or in a scenario like this, you know you don't need f 10. Yeah, you got a nice moment here. But you also have a nice moment back here. It would have been nice to see one and then the other, but then you've got that light flare coming over that guy shoulder wide angle, vertical. You know, I hopefully we're getting a sense that wide angle vertical maybe not the best choice. And again, you know, wide angle, um, got a little distortion on the sides of the main problem here is that it's completely out of focus. The only thing in focus is this guy's face right here. Now, working with light, we're going to run into the same issue that we were looking at with the first dance and parent dance images where we've got light that is not helping illuminate the scene. If this is on camera, flash I can't tell if this is on camera flash or if this is the natural light in the room. But either way it's flat. For example, you're if this has flash. If your shutter speed is 125th of a second, it's killing any chance that you have to bring in any ambient light into the scene so dialling down your shutter speed, your flash will still freeze your subject, and you'll be able to have a little bit more of the warm lights in the room coming in in the background. You know, this is this is a lot of light, but there's not a picture here, you know. It's a very loose crop on. I guess it's people dancing in a reception scene. But this crazy light isn't helping me tell the story, and there's no light here at all. It's if it is flash, it isn't enough to help the scene. So the problem that I'm seeing is it's either flat lit flash that isn't helping either illuminate the scene or separate your subjects from the rest of the scene like so, or it's off camera flash that's coming from an angle that isn't working So, for example, you know the light here is not strong enough on the subjects because that you can see the raccoon eyes on the groom. And here this is an attempted off camera light that's working really, really well until you get to the woman on the right who has our hand up, and it's throwing a shadow on her own face. This is lighting up the floor and the walls. It's way too strong, you know. This is getting there. It's on camera flash. It's not a terrible attempt. You're getting their lower your shutter speed. You know it's not in focus. Unfortunately, it's not in focus, and I can't see your ex if data on any of the images from this photographer. But we have a lot of focus problems in the reception images, and I wish I could have seen senior shutter speeds because I would've been able to tell if it was motion blur or if it was just straight about a focus. But images like this, you know the light is not helping the scene. Whatever is lighting up the back, being a flash or be a room light. It is so strong and there are shadows all over the subject's faces. There's no light on these people at all. If there is on Camera Flash, which I can't tell if there is or not, it is not doing enough to light up the subjects. Same here. You know. This is a 50 millimeter at eso, 1000 at an eighth of a second at 250 at 18 at 250th of a second with the shutter speed that fast, you're not getting in the ambient light at F 18 It's going to be incredibly hard to move to photograph a moving subject. And then you have the 50 millimeter distortion. There needs to be additional light. You know this is shot at F two. It's not even sort of and focus, you know, going natural with your reception. Dancing pictures is a really gamble. At 160th of a second at F two, I'm imagining that focus was a large problem with these reception images. You know there's there's light going on in either corner, but it isn't helping illuminate the scene. There's light going on, but it's too strong, and your shutter speed is too fast. There is not enough light. This is getting there. This is getting closer, you know, definitely getting closer, but it's a little too strong. I would suggest either turning down the power of the light or backing it off just a little bit. You know, this just doesn't work. It's an attempt at a silhouette, but it's just not, you know, it's just not that you can't see their whole heads. All you can sort of see their faces. He's got his mouth wide open. I'm not really sure what's going on. It's a nice attempt, but it's just not getting there. You know, there's again that huge flash burst or light burst in the corner. It's just too much. It's too overwhelming. And then there's again some missed moments, you know? Is she smiling at me? Is she not smiling at me? If she leaning in, is she not leading in? I can't read the scene, and somebody in the Facebook group was like, you know, she said, there was no moment here about Ella. Well, this was a staged shoot. Well, if it was a stage shoot, you can still get a moment out of the staged shoot, right? Like just because it was staged. Maybe not this picture, but what? You know, somebody who was like, Oh, she said that my staged picture didn't have a moment. Why couldn't it have had a moment? You know, I could have a moment right here with Jim if I really wanted to. If we needed you know what I mean? Like, we could interact in some way that we could take a picture even if it's totally fake. You know, I don't know what's happening here. Is it a picture of a group? Is it a picture of just the woman with our hands in the air? Is it you know, there's just so much going on. There's no one identifiable subject, same thing here. You know, it's it's sort of a facial expression, but it's not same thing here. The woman looks adorable and the guys in the middle of making a face of some kind, you have to look at all of the faces. And for something like this, there's just not a story being told. It's a picture of theirs walls and there's faces, and there's really strong light coming from some sort of direction but there's no there's no engagement. I'm not seeing a story, and here you've got a couple of faces that are fantastic and then a couple of faces that aren't working. So when there's a bunch of faces in a scene, they all need Teoh support the story that's being told and they both sort of have their eyes closed, and I don't know who the focus of this picture is, and I can't tell what the focus of this picture is, and I can't tell what the focus of this picture is. It might be the guy in the middle bottom, but his eyes were closed, you know, and this is a great set up, but there's no picture here. The woman that would be the focus of the picture has her head down, so I'm not sure what's going on. You know, there's a ton of people in here, but some of them are out of focus, and some of them are in focus, and I'm not again. I'm not sure where my focus is Same thing here, you know, when you have a lot of people, same thing here. Ah, lot of people who are doing things in a frame. I need to be able to find a clear story. And if I can't find one clear story, I need to find a bunch of clear stories that all work. If you look at this really closely, there's a really nice moment going on between the woman in the foreground and the gentleman that she's talking to. But it's so under exposed that it's hard to see. I can't find a story here. There's a great moment of this. Who white haired woman dancing in the bride laughing at her. But the other three women aren't helping tell that story. Same thing here. I don't know what the story is. It's everybody backs, and she's kind of looking away and down. I'm not sure what's going on. I can't really see anybody, and I can't really see anybody. Do you know what I mean? Like when you've got a scene like this, it's people in a room, right, like it's it's not telling me anything about what it's like to be there again. Be careful with the kissing. It looks like you might be eating her face, but the light is actually really nice. What is this you know, I don't know what this is is is, is the D. J. Was the deejay important to them? Are her headphones important to them? If, if not, what's that? A picture off? Right? And this is really cool light. But again, what's it? A picture off if I'm having to Hunt defined the subject the way I am in some of these images here. I'm not sure what the subject is. It either needs to be crop tighter shot differently. These air just sort of. When I look at these pictures, I'm like, I don't know what's going on here and I don't know what's going on here. I'm just not getting any sort of who is the subject of the story. You know, what's the subject of the story here? Cause it's kind of a foot, but it's also kind of a ground, and it was kind of the foot. The foot's out of focus and what's going on here. You know, it's you had acute expression on the bride, but then you've got a hand kind of coming in on the bottom and the other women, the woman in the front sort of isn't really contributing I'm not sure what the story is, so you need to be clear whether it's a portrait of a bride alone, whether it's a portrait of ah group of people dancing, what's the story that's being told?