Posted by XtremeArtists: 
Your questions were answered in the other thread.

I've heard enough out of you for 1 lifetime.

Posted by XtremeArtists: 
I've been assigned to you for future lives as well.

Ah. My own personal demon?)

Posted by Freelancer: 

Posted by XtremeArtists: 
I've been assigned to you for future lives as well.

Ah. My own personal demon?)

The other way around...

Posted by Freelancer: 
My original idea was to have her looking straight up. I shot one  Should I have stuck with my original idea?

It wouldn't have made much difference either way. The image is so badly composed and lit that it basically needs to be completely re-worked.

A brief laundry list of flaws:
- leg weirdly cropped from frame
- strange stair-step shadow on wall creates confusion
- massive hot spot on shoulder makes it look huge and fat
- model's expression is goofy
- hair bunched on head looks like medium-size dead rodent
- weird floaty piece of night table(?) in left center edge not associated with compositional element
- lighting is simplistic, harsh, and unflattering

Also, you're submitting these images as what appear to be quality "40%" jpegs - or someplace during your image processing you're compressing them so severely that there are massive compression artifacts visible along the edges of her leg and the top of the bed.

mjr.

Posted by Freelancer: 
Should I have stuck with my original idea?

Dude, your photos are worse than mine and you say you've actually BEEN to photo school. I'm just a bus-boy at Denny's who shoots most of his stuff under the big light in the parking lot. And I've got Angelina Jolie's cell phone number on my speed-dial (still waiting for her to pick up so I can talk to her)...

If you want better/more positive feedback, you need to get the girls' titties out, at least. Then people won't notice that your lighting and composition is terrible.

GWC

Posted by GWC: 
If you want better/more positive feedback, you need to get the girls' titties out, at least. Then people won't notice that your lighting and composition is terrible.
GWC

LOL. It's funny because it's true.

Posted by XtremeArtists: 

Posted by GWC: 
If you want better/more positive feedback, you need to get the girls' titties out, at least. Then people won't notice that your lighting and composition is terrible.
GWC

LOL. It's funny because it's true.

Where are all the pics of women taking a shit, that would be an improvement here?

Posted by XtremeArtists: 

Posted by GWC: 
If you want better/more positive feedback, you need to get the girls' titties out, at least. Then people won't notice that your lighting and composition is terrible.
GWC

LOL. It's funny because it's true.

Not only can Xtreme get the girls titties out but he nows how to get them erect and moist, total quality tit job Extreme, you have no idea how happy your tits have made me.

Posted by tony1989tony: 

Posted by XtremeArtists: 

Posted by GWC: 
If you want better/more positive feedback, you need to get the girls' titties out, at least. Then people won't notice that your lighting and composition is terrible.
GWC

LOL. It's funny because it's true.

Not only can Xtreme get the girls titties out but he nows how to get them erect and moist, total quality tit job Extreme, you have no idea how happy your tits have made me.

Thanks Tony.

That image has the most comments in my port. Kinda prooves GWC's point I think.

Posted by Freelancer: 
hmm...Didn't realize I was getting advice from pornographers.

Yeah when left the Marines I did 2 years in the French Foreign legion and when I came out I did some secutity work at a brothel and I ended up being the cartaker manager and became HIV positive, then I went self employed and before I knew it I had two brothels in Leeds, one in Manchester and one in Doncaster.  When I had saved enough to pay the mortagages off I sold up and became a porn baron, you will see a sample of my medical misconduct, internal probing shots on my port.

Posted by Freelancer: 
hmm...Didn't realize I was getting advice from pornographers.

LOL...we're through giving you advice. You didn't listen. Now we're just having fun.

Posted by XtremeArtists: 
I've been assigned to you for future lives as well.

Your in luck cause im takin over when Herb Dies!!

LOL

Posted by Freelancer: 
hmm...Didn't realize I was getting advice from pornographers.

I guess any advice is better than none!! (:---

Posted by Marcus J. Ranum: 

Posted by Freelancer: 
My original idea was to have her looking straight up. I shot one  Should I have stuck with my original idea?

It wouldn't have made much difference either way. The image is so badly composed and lit that it basically needs to be completely re-worked.

A brief laundry list of flaws:
- leg weirdly cropped from frame
- strange stair-step shadow on wall creates confusion
- massive hot spot on shoulder makes it look huge and fat
- model's expression is goofy
- hair bunched on head looks like medium-size dead rodent
- weird floaty piece of night table(?) in left center edge not associated with compositional element
- lighting is simplistic, harsh, and unflattering

Also, you're submitting these images as what appear to be quality "40%" jpegs - or someplace during your image processing you're compressing them so severely that there are massive compression artifacts visible along the edges of her leg and the top of the bed.

mjr.

The night table was the head of the bed. Which was the cause of that horrible shadow. The highlight on her shoulder was probably exactly where my flash was. This image was actually reprocessed from the negative. The original lab print was very very dark. So much for that Kodak MAX s@#t being all purpose. don't care much for Fuli film either. I preferred Kodak Royal Gold 400

Posted by Freelancer: 
The night table was the head of the bed. Which was the cause of that horrible shadow. The highlight on her shoulder was probably exactly where my flash was. This image was actually reprocessed from the negative. The original lab print was very very dark. So much for that Kodak MAX s@#t being all purpose. don't care much for Fuli film either. I preferred Kodak Royal Gold 400

As my old drill sgt (Ft Dix, 1982) would say, "That's an explanation, not an excuse!"

So you understand some of the reasons why at least I think this is not a very effective photo. Next, you get to decide whether you care, whether I'm "right" (though, in art, "right" and "wrong" are tough concepts) enough that you want to listen to me, and then you can maybe not make those mistakes next time.

Or you can decide that I'm wrong, and that the picture, as it stands, is excellent, and just keep shooting that way. There may be an as-yet untapped market for that kind of photographic look and you might get rich and famous. For example, Nan Goldin's photography is something that I wouldn't  even bother to piss on if it was burning, but loads of people appear to love it and have paid tons of money for it.

I think a lot of the photographers here are reacting very negatively to your work because it sure looks like it's amateurish and poorly executed. Now, it's possible that you're a master photographer (like "GWC") who has deliberately affected that look and has practiced for years to achieve it. The joke could be on us. But if you're seriously interested in improving your work, I see a lot of the suggestions made here all point toward how you could bring it in line with "conventional" glamour photography.

mjr.

Posted by Freelancer: 
hmm...Didn't realize I was getting advice from pornographers.

I didn't notice you were accepting any of the advice that's being offered by anyone - so maybe you'll listen to a pornographer or two. Some pornographers really know what they're doing.

mjr.

Posted by Marcus J. Ranum: 
For example, Nan Goldin's photography is something that I wouldn't  even bother to piss on if it was burning, but loads of people appear to love it and have paid tons of money for it.

I laughed and laughed when I read this. Thanks.

Posted by XtremeArtists: 

Posted by Marcus J. Ranum: 
For example, Nan Goldin's photography is something that I wouldn't  even bother to piss on if it was burning, but loads of people appear to love it and have paid tons of money for it.

I laughed and laughed when I read this. Thanks.

Well, I mean, if I had to piss, and it was right there, I suppose I'd do it. But I'd only do it if it looked like the fire might spread and burn something else that mattered.

Seriously, though, this thread has made me think a lot, which is kind of cool. What if you had a photographer who chose the path of badness? What if you had a photographer who went over to the dark side unapologetically and totally. So this DarthGWC, let's call him, manages to somehow build a following and become famous. Then, will the "rules" of exposure and composition and not sucking slowly change?

I guess I'm wrestling with Plato's question (here and in the other thread) as to whether there are ideals or merely conventions. If there are no ideals, then who are we to tell Freelancer "your photography sucks" - we're left only with being able to say, "it does no suit our common unsophisticated tastes"

But Nan Goldin's stuff still sucks.

mjr.

Posted by Marcus J. Ranum: 
Seriously, though, this thread has made me think a lot, which is kind of cool. What if you had a photographer who chose the path of badness? What if you had a photographer who went over to the dark side unapologetically and totally. So this DarthGWC, let's call him, manages to somehow build a following and become famous. Then, will the "rules" of exposure and composition and not sucking slowly change?

If popular music is an example I can say the answer is yes.

The commercial pressures on music have placed image over substance.

In the end, there really is no right and wrong. It's just a matter of taste.

100 years ago, when people had pianos in their homes and played music to entertain themselves, they were much more musically literate. Today it's about teen angst, sex symbols, and anything else the record label can use to target a particular demographic. Some of the least talented and poorly educated "musicians" win Grammy awards.

I might prefer jazz, someone else opera, and yet another person is into chamber music. As elevated as these musical forms are held, they don't have the following or commercial appeal of any of the pop stars and rock musicians that can't read music or don't understand music theory.

Architecture has been called frozen music, because it must comform to the same type of mathematical laws that govern harmony while creating something beautiful. Most of the music on the radio today is like a house of cards, ready to come crashing down. But if there's a cool video or the singer is hot, no one notices.

The real danger to photography then is commercialism and the public's taste.

Posted by Marcus J. Ranum: 
What if you had a photographer who chose the path of badness? What if you had a photographer who went over to the dark side unapologetically and totally. So this DarthGWC, let's call him, manages to somehow build a following and become famous. Then, will the "rules" of exposure and composition and not sucking slowly change?

I've long viewed Jackson Pollock and Frank O'Hara in this way.  Or how about Terry Richardson?

It's not so much that these people are bad (except for O'Hara...and Pollock...possibly Richardson); it's that the people who follow and imitate them do not bother learning the "rules" that subtly underly good art.

And yes, the Grammy's are useless, because they reward popularity rather than talent.  But music itself is not threatened by Britney Spears, any more than it was by countless folk ditties and drinking songs that were popular while Beethoven was thriving.  People have always sung about angst and sex.

It's not until the serious musicians of the world embrace Britney as a genius that we'll have to worry.

Posted by XtremeArtists: 

Posted by Marcus J. Ranum: 
Seriously, though, this thread has made me think a lot, which is kind of cool. What if you had a photographer who chose the path of badness? What if you had a photographer who went over to the dark side unapologetically and totally. So this DarthGWC, let's call him, manages to somehow build a following and become famous. Then, will the "rules" of exposure and composition and not sucking slowly change?

If popular music is an example I can say the answer is yes.

The commercial pressures on music have placed image over substance.
...see American Idol...sheesh, what crap they make those kids sing

In the end, there really is no right and wrong. It's just a matter of taste.

100 years ago, when people had pianos in their homes and played music to entertain themselves, they were much more musically literate. Today it's about teen angst, sex symbols, and anything else the record label can use to target a particular demographic. Some of the least talented and poorly educated "musicians" win Grammy awards. 
ah, I remember Milli and Vanilli...

I might prefer jazz, someone else opera, and yet another person is into chamber music. As elevated as these musical forms are held, they don't have the following or commercial appeal of any of the pop stars and rock musicians that can't read music or don't understand music theory.

Architecture has been called frozen music, because it must comform to the same type of mathematical laws that govern harmony while creating something beautiful. Most of the music on the radio today is like a house of cards, ready to come crashing down. But if there's a cool video or the singer is hot, no one notices.

The real danger to photography then is commercialism and the public's taste.

but maybe you can sneak a little taste into the commercialism and bring one viewer over to the "good" dark side
ah young jedi lens master, use the photoshop force wisely...LOL

(sorry, my responses got mixed in to the quoted bit)

Posted by Brian Diaz: 
It's not until the serious musicians of the world embrace
Britney as a genius that we'll have to worry.

The guys who pro-tooled the backing tracks for her stuff, and who made her voice sound so good are geniuses of a sort. Jedi who use their skills for evil instead of good...

mjr.

Posted by Marcus J. Ranum: 
The guys who pro-tooled the backing tracks for her stuff, and who made her voice sound so good are geniuses of a sort. Jedi who use their skills for evil instead of good...

mjr.

Said by Yoda:
Always two there are...Master and apprentice.

Posted by Freelancer: 
"That's an explanation, not an excuse!" Geez!! All I was doing was explaining what you saw in the photos & explaining where the hotspot on her shoulder came from because you seemed like you didn't know(...)

I'm sorry I wasn't clear and I meant no disrespect.

I can see I need to be less indirect. What I meant was that the viewer never cares about the photographer's problems. They don't need to. They're not the artist. I don't care if your film was bad. I don't care if you had duct tape over your eyes when you shot that image. I don't care how you got that image, in the context of simply looking at it. When you started explaining what the various problems were that you were facing when you shot that image, my brain shut off. Remember, when you're not there to speak on behalf of your picture, it's got to speak for itself. In fact, even if you are there to speak on behalf of your image, it still speaks for itself.

Now, if you'd said, "I have problems focusing because I put duct tape over my eyes when I shoot. Do you have a specific suggestion for how to fix that?" Then we can talk about problems and specific approaches to those problems.

If I can offer a suggestion - I think that a lot of the feedback you've been given points out multiple classes of problems in your photographic efforts. You're probably feeling a bit pounded-upon at this point in time; you wouldn't be human if you didn't feel a bit backed into a corner. So... if you total up the feedback, people are saying bad things about virtually every aspect of your photography: lighting, composition, model poses, etc. Pick one of those areas and start working on it by itself. Don't sweat all the other stuff. Just work on one area with some excercises designed to get you where you want to be in that area. If you're where you want to be, nobody can say S- to you, because you're the artist and you're creating what you want, with intent and will.

If you'd told me, "that hotspot on her shoulder? I put that there deliberately." then I have nothing more to say about it. Nan Goldin's photography looks like complete crap to me but it's crap that she created with intent and she deliberately made it look that way. So I can't criticize her technique, but I sure can criticize her intent.* If I point out there's a hotspot on her shoulder and you reply that your lighting was difficult and whatever - then I don't care. All that I can say at that point is "great. we've both acknowledged that your lighting there was wrong. so fix it already and get back to photographing!"

mjr.
(* as in: "Nan, you're obviously a good photographer, why do you keep taking photos that are carefully constructed to look like amateurish 'friends and family' snapshots from hell?")