It comes up constantly and it turns into an argument because both sides are talking about different things. Why clients ask Usually not to edit themselves. Most often it is one of: they were burned by a photographer who…
Consistent pattern. I edit a photo, I am pleased with it, I post it. A week later the same image looks garish, too much contrast, colours that are not in the world, shadows opened until everything is flat and grey. I…
Something I keep running into taking pictures of friends and family. In person their face reads as normal. In a photo, one eye looks smaller, or the smile pulls to one side, and they immediately say they hate the…
Coming from digital, where ISO is a per shot decision, and trying to get the mental model right rather than learn a list of rules. My camera has a dial for film speed. I set it to 400 for a 400 roll. But if I am indoors…
This may be an unusual problem. My partner photographs at ground level a great deal: lying flat in fields, on paths, at the edge of water, often very still for long periods waiting for light. The recurring issue is that…
A digital image is captured and stored in terms of red, green and blue. A printer then converts it to cyan, magenta, yellow and black to put ink on white paper. That conversion loses information and is a source of…
Shooting in a rented room with ceiling LED panels. I set a custom white balance off a grey card and the overall image is neutral, but skin still looks slightly green yellow, and correcting the skin sends the walls…
First paid product job and I said a day without thinking hard about it. It is 40 small items, mostly rings and pendants, two angles each, client wants a clean white background and files sized for their shop. I have one…
Shooting seriously for about eight months. A three hour walk gives me maybe 300 frames and two I actually like. It feels wasteful and I cannot tell whether it means I am shooting too much, culling too harshly, or…
I shoot most weekends, I know the exposure triangle cold, and my images are technically fine and completely forgettable. I can look at work I admire and see that it is different without being able to say what the…
Shooting street and travel, currently on the kit zoom which I find slow and honestly boring. 600 to spend, used market is fine. Torn between a fast 35mm prime, which everyone calls the classic street focal length, and a…
Mine was shooting nearly everything wide open because shallow depth of field looked like what good photos had, and about half my portraits have one sharp eye and a soft everything else. Someone said it out loud at a…
Crop sensor, 50mm equivalent, portraits at f/2. On the camera screen everything looks tack sharp. On a 27 inch monitor at 100 percent the eyes are just slightly soft — not motion blur, more like the focus landed on…
Late afternoon, sun behind the subject. Expose for the face and the sky is a white blob. Expose for the sky and I get a silhouette. Raising shadows in the edit goes noisy and grey. I know people get glowy backlit shots…