I'm not really pro at this - I'd say I'm better at other types of photos rather than people... cause, y'know, it's all about the eyes and skin tones and BLAH BLAH BLAH will that little voice just be quiet already! But I'd like to hear your opinions. Of course they can be better, butI want you guys to try and focus on both good and bad points of the photo. For each bad point, post a good point! A problem I know I have is having "all faces" in focus... I know how to friggin focus, but I don't know how to focus in certain areas to make it all good. What do I do differently, sort of speak.

Taking photos of people I find is actually quite difficult. I have taken a lot more than these, I picked out a few of my favourites. I've realized using the 50mm really helps out a lot with people photos, which are more of my recent photos. Can you tell which ones? I sure can tell the difference.

1.


2.


3.


4.


5.


6.


7.


8.


9.


10. This one I don't really like how it is - there's something I don't like about it. But maybe one of you like something?


Also, any rude comments about the pictures will not be tolerated. Have some respect.

This post was edited by chantal7 on May 25 2009 10:17pm

I totally agree with you, people are a very difficult subject for shooting, for me at least.

I don't know much about portraits, or photography for that matter, but I'll offer my opinion. I can't say that these things are really bad... To me these would just be things that I'd try to shy away from... First thing is the shadows on your subjects. Growing up around my parents, who do a lot of wedding portraits, I've always been told that shadows are a bad thing. They can be slightly distracting at some times, for example when you have someone's shadow covering someone's face. Now I don't know if this is the proper thing to do because I lack the knowledge about it, but whenever my parents have done portraits they've always used a flash. I believe that helps get rid of the shadows. Secondly, the backgrounds of the photos. In a few, you have an ugly building behind the family, and then the one has like green rails or benches and two poles that are slightly distracting. I just find those backgrounds to somewhat take the attention away from your subjects. Then you have the ones of the girl holding the younger girl/ baby. I think those are great. You took out those two things and the photos came out much better in my opinion.

There's my two cents. Hey, kudos to you for even doing portraits. I think I am overly picky when it comes to shooting people, that makes me not even try shooting them

Thanks

I am overly picky about things too, which is why I hate taking photos of people. But to my surprise, they loved the photos... whenever I go to their house, I see MY photos hung around their walls in their house, and it's somewhat satisfying. I know what you mean about a background, but in my opinion you can't just snap out the background unless you want to edit it heavily in photoshop; which I do not have the patience for. lol. It's kind of like "ok, if I didn't want that ugly building in the background, the sun would be on the other side, and I'd get silhouettes of people and the color would be off". It works one way or another it seems. Frustrating as it could be ^^ haha. Anyway thanks for your reply!

Yeah, backgrounds can be terrible to deal with... A lot of it comes down to location... Finding a great location can be a task in itself... Which is why I don't do people I struggle enough thinking of something to shoot in the first place... Haha

Well I guess I'll start with the negative criticism. I don't have any experience with portraits but I think a lot of those pictures got too much shadows on the people's faces AND in a few of them some of them got their faces really overexposed. I know it's extremely hard to take group pictures I mean you may get a few of them in focus and good lighting but it's very easy to screw up on at least one of them. In my opinion #8-10 are the best probably because there were only few people in those pictures while #4 and 5 are kinda bad because you got Brittany's face extremely overexposed and in #3 you only had her mother and the little ones in focus while the others were a lil bit out of focus. I know it's hard to get the right depth of field when taking group pictures at least to me who is still learning how to control dof and from what I have read you probably should have used a narrower aperture (higher F number) to get everyone in focus. Ok lol I know my criticism is a lil bit harsh but I am just telling you what I think so I hope you won't take it personally or whatever. btw #2 is probably the best group picture of them all. Oh and the background in #1-5 is kinda a lil bit boring as well it's all yellow and brown .

This post was edited by Futurama on May 25 2009 11:41pm

Well this was pretty much what was on my mind as well x3 I'm personally terrible at taking people-pictures if there's more than one subject in the shot. It's hard to get people to do what you want them to do and when you at the same time have to get the manual focus right... it gets tricky and people are impatient xD My friends always start shouting at me if I spend more than 10seconds before snapping a shot which is really my personal problems as I'm the kind of person who can sometimes spend several minutes on the same shot tweaking small things That's why static objects are the best imo XD<3 Anyways, enough about myself Regarding #10, just because you said you felt something is off , I was thinking it perhaps could be the exposure? I'm assuming the wall behind them is pure or off-white and it looks very dark and gray in the shot x3 I'd try playing with the exposure, recovery, fill light and maybe even black in it if I were you (but perhaps you already have?^_^). #9 and #8 look the best imo, although #9 could probably do with some more contrast or something as the shirt kinda blends in x3 (white shirts are evil in photography :c). Just as futu said, #2 is probably the best group shot. Wells, hope this helped you to some extent. I don't really have enough experience in people-photography to be able to give advice on the actual process though x3 Btw, *slightly off-topic* how old are those babies? They look more or less completely newborn.

Really nice, i enjoyed looking at them

the thing wrong with #10 is the harsh shadows. (don't use a raw flash on-camera when people are near to a backdrop)

Haha - yeah. I spose that's the reason why I keep to just taking photos of family/friends rather than strangers. I feel more comfortable, and from experience I know they will like the pictures.



I don't plan on taking any of the comments personally, so don't worry. I asked for the opinions so it's all good. Yeah, there are a lot of shadows, but I kind of like the effect of them. They really liked the park photos for some reason, so maybe the shadows added more of an effect. No one says there has to have absolutely no shadows in photography lol. I realized that I had to use a lower aperture, but then I would get absolutely no light in... they'd all be dark. Or I'd have to use a flash, which makes it unrealistic imo lol. I'll have to practice at it more to get it right. Like in that last photo, I did use a flash, only cause there wasn't enough light. I didn't use my 50mm on that one, and if I did it would have turned out a lot better!



Yep, totally know what you mean about impatience, haha... they're all thinking "what are you doing... why is this taking so long??" When I try to switch settings. I guess it's better to know the settings and know how to change them quickly when it comes to this haha. Yeah, I think maybe you are right, the exposure is off and possibly the background there... it was a gray/white wall... didn't mix well. The babies were about a couple of weeks old, very new to this world



Thanks, glad you enjoyed them!

Raw flash? What's that?

hahaha trying to get good shots of strangers are hard and maybe even a bit dangerous lol.

Well if you need more light while using narrow apertures all you have to do is select a higher ISO speed and/or a slower shutter speed. In the photos you took in the park it was enough light for around f/5.6 at a shutterspeed of 1/80secs or faster but I could be wrong lol. I do agree with you on avoiding using the flash and I have always hated pictures taken with flash lol but from what I have read and heard you can just get a diffuser or somewhere to bounce the flash light so it wouldn't be too bright and make people look like vampires lol. The last picture actually look quite good for have been taken with a flash.

Yeah, I do that, but I never went to the max. The highest ISO I'll go is 800 - I hate using 1600 cause it's just way too noisy of a picture. It's the only thing I hate about my camera. You could be right, but I would actually have to try some test photos with that to see.