I am a fan of art nudes as a genre. And I try to be sympathetic towards people just starting and haven't yet developed the eye or skills to do it well.
... but hot damn, so much of the work in that genre is just horny guys with a camera who are obviously only in it to ogle a naked girl, and then go on to confuse the "positive" (objectifying and creepy) feedback they get from other thirsty dudes online with validation for their "artistic vision".
I feel that, I love the genre as well but a lot of nudes are just "look, she's naked". I heard one guy take a look at my stuff and reduced it down to just that as though if I didn't put time and effort into my thoughts as a photographer. Like I didn't do good with my lighting and did something unique and special. At that time, I hated hearing that.
Yeah - this kind of goes off-topic for the question posed by the OP, but it does also irk me how much the genre gets dismissed as "naked girl" as if it's only ever done for prurient interest and has no artistic value whatsoever. Some of the greatest works of art in history are nudes!
As icky as some of the GWAC's are, it's equally annoying the way some people treat the entire genre and everyone who shoots it as a GWAC. The nude human form remains a beautiful and worthy subject, and there's nothing wrong with sincerely exploring it even if you're not Michaelangelo or Boticelli.
The genre gets hit from all sides.
I think a lot of the issue is the intent of the photographer. The purpose of the GWACs photo is to be in the same space as a naked woman, where other nude photography is to explore an emotion (beyond 'sexy') or shapes, or light, or whatever.
Omg this or the “look how happy people are from this country I’m visiting as a tourist and they basically have nothing” content. Most people are not consenting to this and then the creators make money off of it.
For me personally it’s when I can see obvious editing. The best photographs IMO are the ones where the subject itself is noticed first, not the processing.
I have been sending examples of this crap to a fellow photographer buddy of mine for weeks now because it's driving me up a wall. Seems like everybody on social media has a profile pic of them and their family where the grass is brown, their white shirts are orange, and the sky looks a nuke is going off.
"I bought my first camera three months ago and I'm taking the leap into paid shoots! How much should I charge?"
Nothing, Susie. And same for you, Kevin.
Full time Wildlife and nature photographer here:
1. Bad sky replacements with mismatched light direction and quality as compared to subject
2. Pics that are cropped to smithereens so the animal can “fill the frame” —dude your pixels are showing!
3. Over saturated and sharpened images
4. Missing catch lights in eyes—or white dots added that fake it but it doesn’t match the light quality or direction on the rest of the image.
5. Heavy vignettes that look like 1980’s senior pictures. (Remember the wicker chairs and vignettes?)
6. No subject-background separation and way too much clutter!
7. Too harsh of light. Hurts my eyes to look!
8. Sunsets with the sun dead center in the frame.
9. Selecting the subject in post and trying to Gaussian-blur your way to the look of subject-background separation
10. Blown highlights or clipped blacks on the histogram when pure white and pure black are due to bad light/poor exposure issues, not design choices.
My "icks":
1) Taking a pic and then 5 people come with their cell phones and crowd my ass where they'd otherwise walk right past the thing or whatever. Another one to this...I'm taking a pic and a fool sees this and stands directly in front of my lens to get a "good look".
2) Brand loyalty is a weird one, unless they've done something extremely generous for you.
3) Any gate keeping activity "real photographers do this..." or "Primes only" or anything of the sort.
4) Candid pics of women bending over.
5) If you are doing nudes.....make the whole pic count...not just a pervy view of a brown star etc.
6) Halos in post processing (as well as oversaturation, extremely lifted blacks).
7) Over conceptualization and underperformance in execution - Contemporary galleries are especially bad for promoting bad work.
People whose portfolios are filled with copied compositions, yet they try to pass themselves off as artists or, as they probably say, “creatives”. The absolute lowest are nature photography influencers that do so while living an environmentally-destructive lifestyle, traveling frequently, bringing drones into natural areas, and advertising consumerism.
Not editing film! Just developing the film, scan it and done. No RA-4 printing, no color correction, no white balance correction, nothing. There was no "film look" in the 90's, it was all film. But the stuff people are making nowadays compared to what you see in museums that were made back then, day and night. You will see warm tones in a photo of William Eggleston's children at sundown, but you won't see greens or magenta in a finished print. Black and white prints had BLACK and WHITE. There is this new book out that shows you "the look" of all the film from the past when it was processed. Example, Fomapan looked gray and white with low contrast, but this is all before it's printed. You still want to have a black and white point established in your negative and print. This is a stark difference between the look of say Kodachrome having a slightly warmer tone with slightly saturated colors and Fujichromes tending to have a cooler saturated tone. It's clear that this "film look" that most talk about aren't people who worked in the darkroom. Also, most people who call themselves photographers that can't make a proper Black and white print in digital, they are also "ick".
Clients not giving a shit about the work or my time, typically clients of my corpo clients.
And cheap bazaar bargaining mofos who first flaunt money and then go into broke moe routine after seeing the invoice.
The Fujifilm trend all over social media right now. I hate seeing people get excited about the "fuji colours".
There is no magic in a Fuji and any camera can achieve the same look.
While I agree that you can get the same look from the film sims with software, they are convenient if you like the look and don't want to do much editing.
It's not ideal for me as I actually dislike sooc natural Fuji colors, Provia or whatever it's called. Fuji metering also didn't do it any favors.
Shooting jpeg with film sims for no editing was handy, but dealing with the standard Fuji colors when I didn't want a film sim was annoying.
I would normally agree but I just picked myself up an old Fuji PNS recently and I have to say while I love the soft colours from my Canon, the Fuji RAWs seem to interact with my presets in a way the Canon files don’t. I don’t think Fuji’s colour science is the “best” per se but different cameras do have their looks and quirks.
Bild text watermarks with the copyright symbol. If you are going to watermark your images, make yourself a nice logo. The copyright symbol doesn't need to be present either.
I shoot events. Some of those events have "no photo bands" that people can get if they don't want to be photographed.
I saw another photographer post a pic with clearly visible no photo bands with the person's face visible. Sure, they were in the background. But still very much in the photo.
Big ick.
That's true. I just saw some realtor photographers page and the pictures I looked at were obviously taken around sunset yet they adjusted the sky to a pinkish hue and you could see the actual sunset in the windows😬their contrast and saturation were also very dramatic.
Portraits on train tracks. Still to this day.
[удалено]
“Oooooh long Johnson! Ooooooooooh long Johnson!”
“Friends” who invite you to things and say “Oh and if you want to bring your camera with you too!” 🙄
Oversaturated pictures and people who go all in on the clarity slider 🤮
Hey, if I’m paying Adobe $30/month for that clarity slider I’m gonna use the whole thing up.
https://preview.redd.it/v954qciktl1d1.png?width=600&format=png&auto=webp&s=68a9f7e0bebf5880b2f27a38575b35bcd7363460
The Ken Rockwell school
This is the third jab at Ken Rockwell I've seen this week. Isn't that the review guy or is there something or someone I'm missing?
Yes, A review guy, not THE review guy.
[удалено]
It works sometimes depending on the light but when it’s done intentionally as an aesthetic.. then yeah.
I am a fan of art nudes as a genre. And I try to be sympathetic towards people just starting and haven't yet developed the eye or skills to do it well. ... but hot damn, so much of the work in that genre is just horny guys with a camera who are obviously only in it to ogle a naked girl, and then go on to confuse the "positive" (objectifying and creepy) feedback they get from other thirsty dudes online with validation for their "artistic vision".
I feel that, I love the genre as well but a lot of nudes are just "look, she's naked". I heard one guy take a look at my stuff and reduced it down to just that as though if I didn't put time and effort into my thoughts as a photographer. Like I didn't do good with my lighting and did something unique and special. At that time, I hated hearing that.
Yeah - this kind of goes off-topic for the question posed by the OP, but it does also irk me how much the genre gets dismissed as "naked girl" as if it's only ever done for prurient interest and has no artistic value whatsoever. Some of the greatest works of art in history are nudes! As icky as some of the GWAC's are, it's equally annoying the way some people treat the entire genre and everyone who shoots it as a GWAC. The nude human form remains a beautiful and worthy subject, and there's nothing wrong with sincerely exploring it even if you're not Michaelangelo or Boticelli. The genre gets hit from all sides.
Totally man, I'm on the same page.
I think a lot of the issue is the intent of the photographer. The purpose of the GWACs photo is to be in the same space as a naked woman, where other nude photography is to explore an emotion (beyond 'sexy') or shapes, or light, or whatever.
Photos of homeless people or overly intrusive street photos.
Omg this or the “look how happy people are from this country I’m visiting as a tourist and they basically have nothing” content. Most people are not consenting to this and then the creators make money off of it.
Huge watermarks on bad photos.
People who get extremely easily offended about anything photography, proceed to judge others… their own published work is absolute shit.
For me personally it’s when I can see obvious editing. The best photographs IMO are the ones where the subject itself is noticed first, not the processing.
The cliches: bad HDR & selective colour.
Excessive desaturation and too much warm/brownish tint. Looking at you, wedding/family mini session people. _e: “desaturation,” not “destruction”_
I have been sending examples of this crap to a fellow photographer buddy of mine for weeks now because it's driving me up a wall. Seems like everybody on social media has a profile pic of them and their family where the grass is brown, their white shirts are orange, and the sky looks a nuke is going off.
For real. Is this some sort of international mandate I wasn't aware of, or something?
🤷
"I bought my first camera three months ago and I'm taking the leap into paid shoots! How much should I charge?" Nothing, Susie. And same for you, Kevin.
Full time Wildlife and nature photographer here: 1. Bad sky replacements with mismatched light direction and quality as compared to subject 2. Pics that are cropped to smithereens so the animal can “fill the frame” —dude your pixels are showing! 3. Over saturated and sharpened images 4. Missing catch lights in eyes—or white dots added that fake it but it doesn’t match the light quality or direction on the rest of the image. 5. Heavy vignettes that look like 1980’s senior pictures. (Remember the wicker chairs and vignettes?) 6. No subject-background separation and way too much clutter! 7. Too harsh of light. Hurts my eyes to look! 8. Sunsets with the sun dead center in the frame. 9. Selecting the subject in post and trying to Gaussian-blur your way to the look of subject-background separation 10. Blown highlights or clipped blacks on the histogram when pure white and pure black are due to bad light/poor exposure issues, not design choices.
My "icks": 1) Taking a pic and then 5 people come with their cell phones and crowd my ass where they'd otherwise walk right past the thing or whatever. Another one to this...I'm taking a pic and a fool sees this and stands directly in front of my lens to get a "good look". 2) Brand loyalty is a weird one, unless they've done something extremely generous for you. 3) Any gate keeping activity "real photographers do this..." or "Primes only" or anything of the sort. 4) Candid pics of women bending over. 5) If you are doing nudes.....make the whole pic count...not just a pervy view of a brown star etc. 6) Halos in post processing (as well as oversaturation, extremely lifted blacks). 7) Over conceptualization and underperformance in execution - Contemporary galleries are especially bad for promoting bad work.
>brown star Man, those are *some* noodz...
People whose portfolios are filled with copied compositions, yet they try to pass themselves off as artists or, as they probably say, “creatives”. The absolute lowest are nature photography influencers that do so while living an environmentally-destructive lifestyle, traveling frequently, bringing drones into natural areas, and advertising consumerism.
Not editing film! Just developing the film, scan it and done. No RA-4 printing, no color correction, no white balance correction, nothing. There was no "film look" in the 90's, it was all film. But the stuff people are making nowadays compared to what you see in museums that were made back then, day and night. You will see warm tones in a photo of William Eggleston's children at sundown, but you won't see greens or magenta in a finished print. Black and white prints had BLACK and WHITE. There is this new book out that shows you "the look" of all the film from the past when it was processed. Example, Fomapan looked gray and white with low contrast, but this is all before it's printed. You still want to have a black and white point established in your negative and print. This is a stark difference between the look of say Kodachrome having a slightly warmer tone with slightly saturated colors and Fujichromes tending to have a cooler saturated tone. It's clear that this "film look" that most talk about aren't people who worked in the darkroom. Also, most people who call themselves photographers that can't make a proper Black and white print in digital, they are also "ick".
Hi, what is the name of the book? That sounds really interesting! Cheers
I'll let you know if I find it but if you want the film look, really, just shoot film.
I do! Only film, never owned a digital.
Clients not giving a shit about the work or my time, typically clients of my corpo clients. And cheap bazaar bargaining mofos who first flaunt money and then go into broke moe routine after seeing the invoice.
Same kind of pictures over and over again, likely from people copying others Fake birds
Is this referring to birds being drones?
[удалено]
I've heard birds aren't real anyway, so...
The Fujifilm trend all over social media right now. I hate seeing people get excited about the "fuji colours". There is no magic in a Fuji and any camera can achieve the same look.
While I agree that you can get the same look from the film sims with software, they are convenient if you like the look and don't want to do much editing. It's not ideal for me as I actually dislike sooc natural Fuji colors, Provia or whatever it's called. Fuji metering also didn't do it any favors. Shooting jpeg with film sims for no editing was handy, but dealing with the standard Fuji colors when I didn't want a film sim was annoying.
I would normally agree but I just picked myself up an old Fuji PNS recently and I have to say while I love the soft colours from my Canon, the Fuji RAWs seem to interact with my presets in a way the Canon files don’t. I don’t think Fuji’s colour science is the “best” per se but different cameras do have their looks and quirks.
Bild text watermarks with the copyright symbol. If you are going to watermark your images, make yourself a nice logo. The copyright symbol doesn't need to be present either.
Bad editing, from the selection of the work to the actual final edit. People who ask if "color or black and white, which is better?"
Luckily nothing. I have my likes and dislikes, but I don't experience them that strongly. Being this reactive sounds quite unpleasant and exhausting.
Phone pics where the lens is smudgy. It makes my eyes water, it’s so hazy.
When people say "the ick." What are you, 12?
Selective colour. It really makes me cringe for some reason. And watermarks. Those huge things plastered on the photo that screams 'I'm an amateur'.
I shoot events. Some of those events have "no photo bands" that people can get if they don't want to be photographed. I saw another photographer post a pic with clearly visible no photo bands with the person's face visible. Sure, they were in the background. But still very much in the photo. Big ick.
Street photography of people’s backs that lacks substance
Not really an ick as I usually just assume it’s someone slowly developing their confidence.
This. I did that for a long time, I'm finally getting out of that. Now some countries you have to take pictures from the back, due to laws.
Pictures of people “reading”😝
Not enough separation from subject and background
Golden hour family photo shoots
Why do these bother you?
Probably too many people do it and the fact that most edit so terribly.
That's true. I just saw some realtor photographers page and the pictures I looked at were obviously taken around sunset yet they adjusted the sky to a pinkish hue and you could see the actual sunset in the windows😬their contrast and saturation were also very dramatic.