Marks Fine Art wrote:
I think you are headed in the right direction. But the shots you currently have are on the boring side.   Keep shooting and practicing.

Okay.  Now when you say boring, are you referring to my subjects? my lighting? my framing? my angles? something I'm missing all together?

Niall Photo wrote:
Your port has multiple personality disorder. Perhaps you should have one port for the portrait/couples image, another for the glamor, and the other for the violent. Pick a genre and concentrate on that.

The narrative sequence is a bit obvious, if you want to explore the psychological aspects finding the essential aspects and exploring them with the minimum number of images is something to be considered. At the moment the series looks cliched, you are not giving your viewer enough credit for understanding what you are trying to say. The images in monochrome perhaps need more contrast. looks like you just hit desaturate, rather than balancing the color channels to make the images strong.

If you want to stand out from the crowd, you'll want to make narratives that are not superficial, making the entire narrative fit into one image. If you can convey the entire story into one image, will make your images more powerful.

hope this helps.

Okay.  Now, as a photographer, do you feel it's better to define my parameters and stick to one theme?  Or is okay to be diverse, as long as the different genres are separated into their own portfolios?  And if the later, would it be worth while to actually have the separate profiles?  Or would separate folders within one profile be sufficient? 

Also, i do want to acknowledge that I agree totally about the monochromes being flat... I did work with them with the camera raw channels, so I am aware that just hitting ctrl-shift-u isn't gonna cut it.  I think my tonal range on the set was just too flat, and flat lighting didn't help, so I will focus on that next time I try a monochrome concept.

Thanks for the feedback about the narrative sequence, you make a good point, and I'll focus on getting it scaled back.

Rik Austin wrote:
Looks like you almost know how to take a picture (don't mean that too cruely; not sure I know how yet).  Now its time to escape the cliches.  Start working out original or at least more creative ideas.

Not taken cruely at all, I agree that I'm not there yet... but that's why I'm here, looking for feedback.  I think I'm still in the phase where I'm trying to recreate things I've seen to get acquainted with my camera and my surroundings; but you're right, I need to be original and more creative.

Pictures by Lisa wrote:

Okay.  Now, as a photographer, do you feel it's better to define my parameters and stick to one theme?  Or is okay to be diverse, as long as the different genres are separated into their own portfolios?  And if the later, would it be worth while to actually have the separate profiles?  Or would separate folders within one profile be sufficient? 

Also, i do want to acknowledge that I agree totally about the monochromes being flat... I did work with them with the camera raw channels, so I am aware that just hitting ctrl-shift-u isn't gonna cut it.  I think my tonal range on the set was just too flat, and flat lighting didn't help, so I will focus on that next time I try a monochrome concept.

Thanks for the feedback about the narrative sequence, you make a good point, and I'll focus on getting it scaled back.

It depends what you want to get out of this site. Albums of different genres will show you know how to divide the work. You need to figure out what you want to shoot, I suspect showing mastery of a style or technique with a single image is ok if it's spectacular. But this is all in the context of MM, so I presume you're trying to network and get feedback so dividing the stuff up makes sense, so physically viewers can click around within a portfolio page, rather than navigating to new profiles.

I would concentrate on one genre at a time, but it's a personal choice, so whatever works best for you.