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um excuse me posted:If you want to ride that to the bottom by all means go for it, but it doesn't work for the forum. I like SA, often for the reason you state, but you need a base population to keep quality posters around. And you think becoming yet another lovely-rear end hugbox forum where nobody challenges themselves is gonna keep quality posters around? 
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Dec 12, 2019 04:39
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I came from a time where Snapshot a Day was much, much more active than Photo a Day. Don't pretend like you don't remember.MrBlandAverage posted:And you think becoming yet another lovely-rear end hugbox forum where nobody challenges themselves is gonna keep quality posters around? Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. If you have 1% of your posters be "good" posters, that stat is a result of the demographic your forum culitvates and doesn't shift much. So having 10000 active posters vs 100 matters. And there are many values between whatever finely curated forum you think the Dorkroom is now, and a "lovely-rear end hugbox".
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Dec 12, 2019 04:44
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in general there's been a pretty sharp decline in photographic communities online that seems to have directly coincided with a major drop in sales of consumer dslrs, tell me how flickr is doing these days
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Dec 12, 2019 04:50
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um excuse me posted:I came from a time where Snapshot a Day was much, much more active than Photo a Day. Don't pretend like you don't remember. I also remember when there were 20k concurrently active users on SA as a whole. There weren't any more quality posters than there are now - they're just different ones. The Snapshot a Day thread was filled with mediocre photography - don't pretend like you don't remember - and we've lost nothing by not having it around. If you just want to post photos and be congratulated for posting them, you can get that in plenty of other places.
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Dec 12, 2019 04:52
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MrBlandAverage posted:The Snapshot a Day thread was filled with mediocre photography - don't pretend like you don't remember - and we've lost nothing by not having it around. Site traffic. It's weird that you like SA so much but can't see the bigger picture. For what it's worth I enjoyed seeing users try new things, failing, and trying again. It felt a lot more lively and inspiring than... nothing.
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Dec 12, 2019 05:08
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feel free to contribute by sharing your own photographs
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Dec 12, 2019 05:09
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I suppose I should poo poo or get off the pot. Have a good evening.
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Dec 12, 2019 05:12
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um excuse me posted:Site traffic. It's weird that you like SA so much but can't see the bigger picture. People didn't stop posting here because they were receiving unwanted critiques - non-photo posts were probateable in SAD. That's you projecting again.
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Dec 12, 2019 05:13
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Have at it.  
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Dec 12, 2019 05:24
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uhhhh speaking of ticking the portrait photography box on my resume, my ploy to be permanently barred from taking head on photos of stationary people at my wildlife lens funding gig has failed, so I need to get better with lighting people, posing them, composing a scene, all that. Does anyone have any particular offline or book resources for beginners they recommend? Strobist has helped a lot, any other blogs that come to mind are welcome.
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Dec 12, 2019 05:39
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For the record, I thought this was a pretty nuanced conversation. I'd be interested to hear how what we're talking about has been "absolutism". I don't think anyone was saying "you can't take pictures of women", or even "you can't take mediocre pictures" (I exclusively take mediocre pictures). The pictures were fine and well executed. The stuff that has been discussed is not stuff we're making up, it's part of a much wider and longer running conversation. If you're going to be a photographer, and improve as a photographer, that conversation should be something that you understand and keep in mind as you're creating work. um excuse me posted:If y'all want to keep the forum active, you probably shouldn't scare off people who enthusiastically share their work. If they don't want help from you, don't cram it down their throats. You can push people away by helping too much. If you kill their enthusiasm you kill their drive to become better and then it doesn't matter how valid your point is. It's the reason I mostly only lurk. It's been the same few people causing this issue for years and it's a shame. It sounds like you have an issue with the way that this subforum is run. I'm not trying to scare off posters, I enjoy talking about this stuff. I'll admit that perhaps my initial comment could have been phrased better, and I'll try to be more polite in the future. I'm not sure the essence of the critique was wrong though. I'm curious, how would you suggest I should have responded?
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Dec 12, 2019 06:09
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Also, I think a lot of online photo forums have gotten less busy because of the rise of instagram. Why post in snapshot a day when you can post to the gram? I think that removes a significant number of posters, and leaves people who are a little more interested in discussing photography.
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Dec 12, 2019 06:15
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I was also enjoying the discussion. My experience tracks very closely with LN's as far as female vs male models, and the expectations of the models is concerned. I absolutely understand where Ansel Autisms and MrBlandAverage are coming from and the discussion around how we portray women vs how we portray men is a valuable one to have. For myself, I'm trying to improve my technical skill and my confidence in directing, which means taking photos of pretty much anyone who will agree to sit in front of me. Because I'm not paying those people, the outcome is a collaborative one between me and the model, and overwhelmingly that means the women I shoot want to look sexy at whatever level of clothedness they are comfortable with. That's absolutely societal conditioning, but saying I'm not interested in doing that means I don't get to take photos. I'd absolutely love to do more conceptual shoots where there was less of a focus on glamour, and more of a focus on art but by and large the people who find me are not interested in that. Sometimes I get asked to do fetish photography, which is (maybe paradoxically) much less sexy in intent, but those are not usually publishable by me. Here's one I can use.  IMG_1594-Edit.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr Here is a not-woman  IMG_1765.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr  IMG_1702.jpg by Iain Compton, on Flickr
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Dec 12, 2019 09:05
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um excuse me posted:If y'all want to keep the forum active, you probably shouldn't scare off people who enthusiastically share their work. If they don't want help from you, don't cram it down their throats. You can push people away by helping too much. If you kill their enthusiasm you kill their drive to become better and then it doesn't matter how valid your point is. It's the reason I mostly only lurk. It's been the same few people causing this issue for years and it's a shame. As a realtively new poster to the Dorkroom, about 2 years now, I'm grateful for a community that'll tell me I'm poo poo and I think it's improved my photography dramatically, as well as always pushing me to get better. I don't feel like it's gatekeeped, and I don't feel like I've been poo poo on for not following an unwritten set of rules you seem to believe exist. You just seem very unwilling to take criticism and engage in a conversation where you feel attacked, when it's just a culture of bluntness.
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Dec 12, 2019 09:54
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um excuse me posted:If y'all want to keep the forum active, you probably shouldn't scare off people who enthusiastically share their work. If they don't want help from you, don't cram it down their throats. You can push people away by helping too much. If you kill their enthusiasm you kill their drive to become better and then it doesn't matter how valid your point is. It's the reason I mostly only lurk. It's been the same few people causing this issue for years and it's a shame. The goal of the commentary is to help people think more critically about their approach to photography. If the subforum was shut down because people aren't interested in that then why should anyone care? Tell me another place you can go on the internet and have your photos critiqued for free. I'm talking about critique beyond the photos' technical aspects, because anyone can do that. Nobody wants to take the time to actually think critically about poo poo since it's much easier to give a quick line of praise to the photos you like and ignore the ones you dislike, so that's what people do. Likewise it's much easier to think of yourself as a "pretty good photographer" and stagnate forever than to have your work challenged and actually keep progressing. Most people take the easy path which is why most people take the same boring photos as everyone else. Spend 5 minutes on 500px and tell me you don't notice the trends. If people are enthusiastically sharing their photos but are unenthusiastic about someone taking a big ol' poo poo all over them, then what makes them enthusiastic about sharing their work? It's probably because they're proud of their photos and they're expecting to hear some praise for them. Hearing only praise when you have a lot of room to grow is the #1 contributor to stagnation. People who proudly stagnate have falsely inflated egos and are going to be the quickest to dismiss styles and opinions that clash with their own. They seek out like-minded people because it makes for a more comfortable existence. They form giant communities where they just sit around praising each other and everyone feels great, but there's no real progression. Shallow trends develop over time and people latch onto them because they want to be popular. Anything outside the norm is shot down or, even worse, ignored completely. That isn't some harrowing tale of what's to come, it's what's already happened in the major online photography communities. If you think there are better alternatives to what's available on SA then honestly at the moment you're probably part of the problem. You can change of course but first you're going to have to see the forest for the trees. Some of the "shitposters" here are people who have devoted the vast majority of their lives to consuming and creating photography so of course they're going be passionate about most facets of the art. If that's not where you're at or where you want to go then of course there are going to be some disagreements in approach, but none of this is supposed to be taken personally. That said, people always take it personally at first. We don't live in a society where we're used to being openly criticized as adults so it feels demeaning and embarrassing to be openly told in view of others that our poo poo stinks. What type of person you are determines how you react to it- either you accept it as an opportunity for growth, or you say "gently caress this" and gently caress off to somewhere else. Whose loss is it really?
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Dec 12, 2019 13:55
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tk posted:Have at it. Subject looks bored and it's contagious. They would fit well in a family album, so just ask her mom what she thinks of them.
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Dec 12, 2019 14:38
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RangerScum posted:Subject looks bored and it's contagious. They would fit well in a family album, so just ask her mom what she thinks of them. But no really, the 3rd one is a tad underexposed but beyond technical details what is there to say? I don't really know what your goal is with them so I can't judge them based on that. They don't work as lifestyle photos, they don't tell a story or really let me get to know the woman besides the fact that she doesn't look very happy. I guess in the middle one it's weird how you have her legs get warped by the perspective so they seem huge. Is this the type of stuff you wanna hear? In the top one it's kind of crooked in different layers and that is sort of interesting I guess but the only reason I'd ever even notice it is if someone asked me to study the photo, otherwise there's not enough substance to cause me to linger on it.
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Dec 13, 2019 00:09
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RangerScum posted:But no really, the 3rd one is a tad underexposed but beyond technical details what is there to say? I don't really know what your goal is with them so I can't judge them based on that. They don't work as lifestyle photos, they don't tell a story or really let me get to know the woman besides the fact that she doesn't look very happy. This is good feedback. I like the first picture. The second two aren’t as good but I got attached to them while I was taking them. Portraits aren’t my preferred form of photography, mostly because having another person involved really cramps my “spending time alone with my camera” style. But friends and family often want pictures taken of themselves, and while I’m doing that I would like to get better at it. I read through Picture Perfect Posing at some point in recent history. Thought it had some good advice, 90% of which I forget the instant I pick up my camera. I feel like I’ve gotten a bit better at some aspects of body posing and group posing. Facial expressions have thus far eluded me.
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Dec 13, 2019 16:44
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tk posted:This is good feedback. I like the first picture. The second two aren’t as good but I got attached to them while I was taking them. At the end of the day if someone you know is asking you to take a photo of them in the unpaid informal sense while you're out doing whatever I think it's somewhat casual photography. You can make sure you're not committing any generic photo mistakes like cutting off limbs or having horizons be incorrectly leveled but beyond that you're just going to do your best with framing and the person gets a couple high res photos of themselves that are a reflection of what they wanted when they asked for the photo. These photos generally aren't super interesting to anyone else and aren't going to generate much data that you can use to improve your actual photography. I see this as different from shooting in a serious sense where you have a model who is relying on you for instruction, where you're creating something intentionally with artistic vision and have great control over many variables of the scene. In that sense the result is a reflection of what you wanted, which hopefully contains implicit visual interest, expresses something, invites the viewer to consider something, or just generally has a purpose beyond a snapshot documenting something that happened. In this situation, because there is much more of the photographer's hand in the work, there is much more value in presenting the work for critique. Generally for facial posing in the informal setting I'd suggest just taking a lot of shots which the subject isn't really preparing for so you get a natural looking subject. Think about some of your favorite photos of your family, friends, or yourself - in most cases these aren't going to be staged photos with everyone in a line looking at the camera as if to lifelessly say "here we are, existing in this place". With the method I described you do get a lot of throwaway shots with people's mouths in stupid positions and otherwise unflattering facial expressions but you do tend to get more usable and interesting shots IMO. VelociBacon fucked around with this message at 18:31 on Dec 13, 2019 |
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Dec 13, 2019 18:26
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I don't think people object to feedback as much as they object to the caustic nature of some feedback. Shitposting antagonistic one-liners and hiding behind "uhm akshually im just critiquing" is the kind of lame trolling most of the Internet grew out of years ago. The discussion that followed has definitely had more value than what started it, but that doesn't mean the valuable parts of the discussing couldn't have happened without someone being a oval office at the outset if people actually wanted to.
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Dec 13, 2019 19:03
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Pretty Cool Name posted:the kind of lame trolling most of the Internet grew out of years ago. While I don't entirely disagree with the general thrust of your post, I do think you're in an entirely different internet than everyone else.
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Dec 13, 2019 19:48
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Pretty Cool Name posted:I don't think people object to feedback as much as they object to the caustic nature of some feedback. 
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Dec 13, 2019 19:49
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Pretty Cool Name posted:I don't think people object to feedback as much as they object to the caustic nature of some feedback. Lmao
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Dec 13, 2019 20:02
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Pretty Cool Name posted:I don't think people object to feedback as much as they object to the caustic nature of some feedback. Speaking of that discussion, would you like to guess how many times people have discussed male gaze in this very thread? We've had to go over it like three times in the last four years. I know this is your first time posting in this thread, dunno if you read it often but it doesn't exactly move too fast. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to read the thread because learning from others is a great way to learn about photography. As for whatever other poo poo you're saying, everyone please ignore Pretty Cool Name, they're just a grumpy old man. Now please be sure to continue to post extremely respectfully towards me even though i'm telling everyone to ignore you since it's clearly the behavior you expect of others.
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Dec 13, 2019 20:23
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RangerScum posted:As for whatever other poo poo you're saying, everyone please ignore Pretty Cool Name, they're just a grumpy old man. Now please be sure to continue to post extremely respectfully towards me even though i'm telling everyone to ignore you since it's clearly the behavior you expect of others. This is what's getting me - I was a prick to "um excuse me", but they were legitimately telling someone to ignore my very valid question. It's absurd to say that I'm hiding behind "uhm akshually im just critiquing" when it's perfectly acceptable to be a dismissive rear end in a top hat as long as you use capital letters and write more than one sentence in your post.
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Dec 13, 2019 20:28
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tk posted:Facial expressions have thus far eluded me. IMO most photographic posing in general is usually corny looking as gently caress. For example please look at Helen Highwater's photos earlier on this page, I think those are all bad poses because they look so staged which completely takes me out of the photo. That said I'm just not a fan of studio portrait photography at this point, so I'm biased. I'm not saying posing is easy, but I think if you're going to be shooting people who aren't actors then giving them a very neutral pose is probably your best bet because let's be honest, lots of people can't even give a convincing smile on command. I think the poses in your photos were fine but it's the overall lack of substance in them that leaves me uninterested. You have to remember that your audience in this case has no connection to the subject so there has to be something there to make them care enough to really look at the photo. Then, once they're looking at the photo, give them something to take away from it. As an aside this does not apply to your pics, but I get loving annoyed when people think that the subject being conventionally attractive is enough of a reason for the audience to pay attention to a photograph. It's incredibly boring, shallow, and lazy. It speaks volumes of the photographer's motivations.
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Dec 13, 2019 21:08
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Pretty Cool Name posted:I don't think people object to feedback as much as they object to the caustic nature of some feedback. it is completely unsurprising that somebody who thinks the post that started this discussion was bad would use a gendered insult like "oval office"
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Dec 13, 2019 22:04
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Shooting nudes is whatever. The patriarchy is real and in many ways the reason you find that kind of work satisfying is that it garners attention from (mainly male) consumers on instagram or 500px or whatever. The model isn't necessarily being taken advantage of, nor are they necessarily a hapless victim of some attention-seeking complex due to some condescending notion of internalized misogyny. That's sort of a sex-negative feminism approach on the model's agency here. In a better world there'd be an equivalent amount of sexy posts, of different body types, genders, skin colors etc etc., and they'd be consumed with equal amounts of attention and respect from an equally diverse audience. The limited gamut of "hot, thin" modelmayhem 500px photography that gets 5000 likes on instagram from midwest dads and teenage boys is just a reflection of what kind of portrait content generates attention. When people in this community see that kind of photography, they find it uninteresting. At best we can grade you on how well you follow certain editing & banal portrait taking trends. At worst, it's seen it as a reflection of your uninteresting participation in a predictable trend of content creation. (Almost) anyone can buy a full frame dslr and a wide aperture portrait lens, and it can be fun to pose and shoot a willing (hot) person, and the gear becomes your ticket to that kind of experience (whether your intentions are good, or you're a creep). Either way, the impulse makes sense, right? There's a rewarding outcome, you feel like you've accomplished something existentially and on top of that you even get some attention. quote:My point is that photography is a demand driven thing. This seems to be the mostly invisible point that people in this discussion are dancing around. What demand is being met here? In a lot of ways, you, the boring hot model photographer here, are invisible. These photos could be taken by anyone. You can put your watermark on it, you can get a lot of attention on a media platform, but there's 10,000 other photographers doing work that's likely indistinguishable. At a flippant glance, having brought nothing to the table, you're bridging the demand between males and their need for more content for their sexy-but-interesting-enough-to-make-me-not-seem-gross wallpaper folders. Much like how your annoyance is with the curt feedback, the community's annoyance is with your denial in what it is you're doing. If you posted the same stuff with a different attitude, or interest in more specific technical feedback, like: "I need help taking better boring sexy portraits", they'd probably respond pretty positively and actually help you take better boring sexy portraits. Awareness in what it is you're doing and where you'd like to be, artistically, is probably the best way actually improve. If you can't articulate it without having a little meltdown, then you're probably not in a great place yet. a cyberpunk goose fucked around with this message at 23:50 on Dec 13, 2019 |
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Dec 13, 2019 23:38
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tk posted:Have at it. I think this one looks better with the horizon leveled instead of the boat.
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Dec 14, 2019 00:03
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VelociBacon posted:Generally for facial posing in the informal setting I'd suggest just taking a lot of shots which the subject isn't really preparing for so you get a natural looking subject. Think about some of your favorite photos of your family, friends, or yourself - in most cases these aren't going to be staged photos with everyone in a line looking at the camera as if to lifelessly say "here we are, existing in this place". With the method I described you do get a lot of throwaway shots with people's mouths in stupid positions and otherwise unflattering facial expressions but you do tend to get more usable and interesting shots IMO. RangerScum posted:You have to remember that your audience in this case has no connection to the subject so there has to be something there to make them care enough to really look at the photo. Then, once they're looking at the photo, give them something to take away from it.
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Dec 14, 2019 00:16
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Helen Highwater posted:
There's some fucky stuff going on in the background with what I assume is some leftover of compression that only looks worse as you go to full size -- really bad blocky stuff, and a spot to the left of his face that is lighter than the rest that needs burned down. Consider masking around him and doing a gaussian blur or something. Also, take some time to clean up the floor he's on with a healing brush or content aware magic, there's lots of little scuff marks and hairs and stuff.
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Dec 16, 2019 01:55
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Was out hunting and photographing yesterday and at some point trudging through the brush must have bumped the lens lock button on my body and got like a dozen shots with some light leak going on. This one actually turned out kinda cool despite the exposure just being absolutely toasted.
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Dec 22, 2019 17:10
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drat, somehow this thread fell off of my bookmarks. I missed quite a bit apparently. Anyway, have a photo...  DSCF0178 by Make Them Awesome, on Flickr
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Dec 23, 2019 01:05
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I don’t really shoot portraiture but I did enjoy the discussion above. I got absolutely piled on for some lovely street photography here when I was starting out and I’m so glad that I got the explicit message that what I was doing was lazy, ethically questionable and that, fundamentally, I hadn’t thought about what I was photographing at all and instead I was simply mimicking what I though art was. I wasn’t making art, I was copying (badly) what other people had done without even thinking about how or why those original shots were made. The Dorkroom has definitely made me a better photographer because now I think about the why and not just the how. For example, I started doing street portraits but once I’d gotten over the fear of asking people to take their photos I was left asking myself important questions about why I was doing this. Is it right to inconvenience a stranger to get a pretty meaningless portrait of someone I don’t know and that they will likely never see. Is there a narrative here apart from my fear being conquered? Is that a good enough reason to do street portraits? I don’t think so and so I’ve stopped for now until there is a good reason to start again. Lastly I would say that the dorkroom has some of the most interesting photography on the Internet. Devoid of +1s for hot models or Instagram-location over-saturated landscape photos, there is a place for gnarled trees in the Australian deserts, desolate shopping malls and series of photos of plastic chairs. Photos here are rarely boring and the standard of critique that goes beyond the obvious technical aspects of the medium is pretty special. I for one salute the Dorkroom and all those who post within her.
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Dec 31, 2019 13:26
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Nigel Tufnel posted:I don’t really shoot portraiture but I did enjoy the discussion above. 
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Jan 4, 2020 00:46
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These are my only showcase-able ones (Imgur compression) 
Darmvlinder fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Jan 6, 2020 |
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Jan 6, 2020 23:18
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Did a shoot with a few film cameras just to see if I was any good at it. Here's some of the stuff from the 35mm B&W.    
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Jan 8, 2020 08:45
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Edit: I posted this photo and then read the last two pages of discussion. Hit me with your worst.  2020_Unsorted Photo Imports_001 by Esa Foto, on Flickr
huhu fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Jan 18, 2020 |
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Jan 18, 2020 02:35
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Edit never mind
huhu fucked around with this message at 22:24 on Jan 26, 2020 |
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Jan 25, 2020 22:50
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hosed around and took a portrait of my dog
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Feb 16, 2020 18:52
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