This might be a little harsh, but there's no doubt that some of us will head for the nearest exit when certain people want to show us their photos! If you're one of those people, this podcast is for you (and my online courses too)!
Here are the 6 reasons and I go through each one in turn:
Your subject (or lack of)
Your composition (if there is any)
No connection between subject and viewer
Incorrect lighting and exposure
Over-processed and looks unreal
Showing them to the wrong people
I hope you find something useful that you can work with.
This might be a little harsh, but there's no doubt that some of us will head for the nearest exit when certain people want to show us their photos! If you're one of those people, this podcast is for you (and my online courses too)!
Here are the 6 reasons and I go through each one in turn:
Your subject (or lack of)
Your composition (if there is any)
No connection between subject and viewer
Incorrect lighting and exposure
Over-processed and looks unreal
Showing them to the wrong people
I hope you find something useful that you can work with.
So are you the person that when you get back from a, holiday or whatever it might be, and you want to show your photographs, you just find that people start disappearing very quickly, or they go to the bathroom and climb out the window and disappear. Does that ever happen to you? So if it does, or there's, let's say, a general lack of excitement, if you start talking about showing your photographs, there's probably a few things you're doing that, you could easily change. And, in fact, they're things that, in my experience, most people do who don't, have a great interest in photography, but like to take photographs. And let's face it, most of us like to take photographs, with our phone, or if you've got camera equipment, you'll use that. But unfortunately, I would also say probably the majority of people don't really know what they're doing, so they'll kind of snap away and it's all, they all look the same, the images look the same. They're not very inspiring. And hence you get that reaction if you offer to show them to anybody, or you pop them on facebook and it's just crickets and tumbleweed blowing through and no reactions at all. So I've picked on half dozen things you might want to think about that can make a big difference, and they may well be what you're doing wrong. So let's dive in. So the first one is having a subject. Now, I've seen a couple of things happen here. The first thing is that there's no subject at all, or I'm looking at a photograph, and I really don't know what I'm supposed to be looking at. So that's what I mean by a subject, that when you show the photograph to somebody, they should know what they're supposed to be looking at in that photograph. Ideally, you're telling some sort of a story, hence the visual storyteller that I talk about a lot. But if you're looking at a photograph and you're just asking the question, what am I supposed to be looking at here? That, to me, says that the photographer in that instance has not made, either a good choice on how they put that photograph together, or they're not even really clear themselves about why they're taking it. They're just maybe taking it for the sake of taking it. So that's the first thing, make sure that you have a subject. And the second thing about a subject, if you're going to get a good reaction to your photograph, your subject has to relate to the person who's looking at it. So I'm going to come back to that, as well, in a slightly different way. But if people aren't particularly interested in what you've taken a photograph of, so let's say that, you've taken a photograph of a train and the person that's showing it to is really not interested at all. they're not going to be terribly inspired, so they're going to quickly flick past. If you leave them to control the speed at which they're looking at the photographs, they're going to quickly, quickly go through. And if you tend to keep showing them trains and they don't want to know about trains, they're the kind of people who, if they can get out of the window, they probably will. So think subject, think about, do you have a subject? Is it clear what that subject is? And is the subject likely to be of interest to the, let's call them, the audience that you're sharing that photograph with? So that's the first thing to start with. The second thing is compositions that kind of relates to the subject. So once you have a subject, how do you then present that to your audience? So if it's a photograph of a person, what I see most people do who I'm going to say don't have an interest in photography. And what I mean by that is they don't have sufficient interest to start being slightly critical about what they're doing and look at ways to improve it. So if you're listening to this, that won't be you, but you may have previously been in that category, because the fact that you're listening to this is telling me that you do want to make some improvements to your work, at least start shooting photographs that are more interesting, if only to yourself. So composition is really important. I can talk about composition a lot, in the photography courses I give, and in fact, the webinars that I've given in the past, quite a few sections or sections of the, photography course are about composition. And I've given webinars on composition, and there's certainly a lot of information around on the web. If you're not interested in buying a course, then do have a look around. But composition is essentially, let's call it the discipline of, first of all, finding your subject. So dealing with the first issue I've already raised and then presenting it in such a way that you engage the person looking at the photograph. So you might use leading lines, for example, to take them on a journey through the picture towards your subject. Now that can sound a little bit grand, maybe a bit complicated. It really doesn't have to be. But slapping your subject right in the middle of the frame with a very boring background or in a very boring situation where all you do is view is you look straight at the subject, done, move on. That is not what I would call good composition. You really want to have the person look at the image for a little while. And one of the best definitions I heard of a good photograph and this relates to composition is the longer they look at it, the better it is. And the reason that you make them look at it is not searching for a subject, it's actually drawing them into the photograph. So that the longer they look at it, the more they see in that image and the more it relates to them and it tells more of a story. It's coming back to that idea. The third thing, and I've already touched on this is that the photograph really doesn't connect with the viewer at all. Now it may be because there's no interest, but really what you want ideally in a photograph is some level of emotional connection. So telling that story, it might be it's photograph of a person, they're happy, they're sad, they're thoughtful. And this is where subject and composition work together because you draw the viewer into that image and there's something in there that will connect with them emotionally. Now, again, this doesn't have to be a major emotion. We're not looking at them bursting into tears. I mean, it could be if the photo is that bad, but we're not looking at that kind of level particularly. Although if you're shooting, portraits, ideally when you shoot, let's say portraits of children showing these pictures to mum particularly. But I'm not going to get sexist here. So dad might have a crack as well. But if they start crying, you know, they really connect with that image. That is a very powerful image. And if you think about photographs that you like that are of people, it could also be animals, it could be any situation. But if you think about photographs that are, favourites of yours, think about the points I'm raising here and how many of those boxes are getting ticked or were ticked by that photographer when they took that photograph. Because all of these give you little clues and little hints about what you can do with your own photography to start getting that kind of reaction to them from other people. So that was the third thing, connection, emotional connection with your subject. The fourth thing is lighting and that's technical, I guess, because you need to have the correct exposure on your subject. So when we photography is all about light, if you think about it, what we're doing is we're capturing light. And we're capturing the light on a particular subject in a particular, context, in a particular environment. And the technical side, the thing that I think is the first thing to get right. Technically, there are a few. I mean, you want to get it in focus. That's probably the first thing actually thinking about it. But definitely the second thing is to make sure your exposure is correct. And the thing you set the exposure to is your subject, whatever that is. And I would say that if it's, a person diving in a little bit deeper, you probably want to get the exposure correct on one of their eyes. So normally you would focus on one of their eyes. But probably doesn't matter in most m situations which one it is. But depending on how your subject is lit, you definitely want to focus on the eye that has the best lighting on it. And getting that exposure correct does a couple of things. The, key thing it does is it tends to draw the viewer to your subject's eye. And our, eyes are where we tend to make the strongest emotional connection. Again, when we look at a portrait, we tend to look at the subject's eyes. Because when we're looking at another person, we look at their eyes. The whole. The eyes of the window to the soul kind of thing. We, don't get terribly excited, usually. I'm not going to say always, but their nose or lips or ears, whatever we're focused on. But definitely the eyes are what you want to think about. So you need to get the exposure correct on the eye. Even if the exposure is a little bit off on other parts of, let's say, their face or their body. Because those aspects you can correct in post processing to some degree or another. But if you don't get the exposure correct for the subject. And the point on your subject that you're focused on, that is really the focal point of that whole photograph, then you're gonna have a pretty. You're gonna have an uninspiring photograph, potentially. But I would say you're definitely gonna have one that won't work. So getting your lighting right on your subject is definitely the fourth thing to think about. The fifth thing I've already touched on, and that's post processing. And some people sort of go crazy in the post processing. And you end up with a photograph that just looks totally fake. Someone looking at it, can't really relate to it. And the only, and here I'm talking about you might oversaturate the image. you might even drop other elements in, you know, with, withdeze software that we have today and with AI as well, frankly. AI photographs I generally dislike because they, they don't look real. It's for that reason. So I don't relate to them because it all looks very fake. so but even with things like Photoshop and other editing packages, you can drop in other elements, so you can add in you know, cartoony things or fantasy things, whatever. So unless you're deliberately trying to produce photograph that, I would call them abstract because they're not real. So it might be the colours are incredibly intense or you've got other elements you've edited in there, or you combine several photographs so you've got something that you couldn't look up from the camera and see. So that would be my, I guess another way of measuring that or defining it. Then you have photograph that people aren't going to relate to or you have a photograph that is only relevant to a certain audience. So that is something to think about. I haven't pulled it out as a specific thing to improve your photograph or why people don't like your photograph. But if you are showing that photograph to the wrong people then obviously they're not going to relate to it. So I've use the example of photographs of a train, not that I take many photos of trains but, and I probably wouldn't, I don't know, you know, I kind of get interested in all sorts of things but there you go. Do have a thought about who is going to be looking at that photograph. Now the final thing, so I guess reason number six is that people might not like your photograph. First of all, again this one splits down a little bit. So first of all because photography is very subjective. So you can take a photograph that is technically correct, but is absolutely totally boring to look at, or you can take a photograph that has lots of technical problems in it, but is absolutely amazing and inspiring. And this is down to some of the things I've already spoken about, but you can't get away from the fact that photography is subjective. So this again takes you back to who is your audience. Depending on where you're sharing your photos, it might be with family and friends, you might be putting photos up on Instagram or Facebook and definitely with things like Instagram. I mean Pinterest is another one, but with Instagram you can put tags on, I think you can most things now, but you put a tag on and that's sort of tagging the audience. If you like people who are following that particular tag, this is the audience you're tagging. So you want to get that correct if you want to get, say, a lot of likes or, you know, nice positive feedback. So if you are new to this idea of tagging your photographs, have a look at some of the tags that you might want to use. So I use wildlife a lot and wildlife photography, if you don't. If you want to get an idea of what people are looking at, though, within that tag, just put it up on Instagram. Just do a search against that tag and you will see a lot of images that have been tagged, with wildlife photography or wildlife, whatever it is you're searching for. And you can also dive a little bit deeper by looking at those images and looking at the number of likes, if that's what you're going for. So start looking at which photographs under that tag get the most likes and then that will give you some pretty strong hints about what sort of photographs people like to look at. And again, you can come back to each of these aspects that I've already mentioned. So how they lit, how they composed, what is the subject? Is there an emotional connection with the subject? Do any of these apply? Do all of them apply? So that is a good way of just spending a little bit of time doing a little bit of research. You don't have to spend much time at all, frankly. you know, half an hour will give you an awful lot of information, and applying that information back to your photography is like to get likely to end up with you getting a lot more likes, when it's seen by people within those groups, if you tag them, the groups that you've searched on. So that's the first thing about, I guess, people, if you like that aspect of it. First of all, it's subjective. Secondly, and it's something that I've spoken to people about and it's something I do raise fairly regularly when I speak about photography. And that is you will get people who will criticise you and criticise your photography, and they'll do it for all sorts of reasons. And it can be quite upsetting if you've put a photograph up and you're quite pleased with it, and then you get all this negative feedback. So the thing I say to people is, first of all, if you want constructive criticism on your images, go to people whose work you like, whose opinions you value and specifically ask them if they wouldn't mind giving you just some feedback on the image, what they think about it, or, perhaps things that they feel you could improve to make it better. Now, even with that, when you've requested that feedback, I always take it with a little pinch of salt, simply because they are providing their opinion and they are probably talking about your work, in terms of how it relates to what they do. And as photographers, it's really good to develop your own style, whatever that might be. So by all means, be inspired by, by other people, but don't just copy them or do what they tell you to do, unless you feel it has value and it allows you to develop your own style. So if it's relevant to your style, then absolutely, great, go for it. But if you're getting feedback and you think, well, yeah, that's kind of not what I was going for, or I understand what you're saying, but I don't really like that as a, as a final result, those kind of comments, then the thing to do is just take that on board. But the nice thing about asking for advice is that you don't necessarily have to follow it and obviously always thank people who give you advice. So that's when you've solicited feedback from somebody. For me, unsolicited feedback is irrelevant. This is telling you more about the person who's giving you the feedback than your work. Some people, for whatever their reasons are, whether it's. They're feeling ignored, they want to be important, blah, blah, blah, all those things, that kind of feedback is all about them. It can be upsetting, if you're upset by somebody's feedback, I would block them and ignore it. So that really is the thing that I would strongly say to you. If you're a photographer, you're engaged in an art form. And as I've said, it's very subjective. And if you look at Picasso, constable, photographers, Annie Leibovich. I'm trying to think the guy actually did the black and white landscapes and his head's gone out. M his name's gone right out of my head. Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that even people who are well respected and have big names in whatever their field is, you will always find people who don't like their work. You'll always find people who are quite happy to jump in and start criticising them. So don't worry about it. You know, ignore them if you're. The important thing is I think ultimately is that if you get excited by a photograph you've taken. That to me says that that's, that photograph is a good photograph. If you're getting excited by it, if it motivates you to try other things, then that's great. The reason I think most people listen to podcasts like this, take courses, go to webinars, all these other things, is that they have a genuine interest in photography, they have a genuine interest in their art. You might not think of it in those terms, but I think it's quite right to say that. And they are always open to ways of improving what they do. Their interest in learning from other people whose work they like to try and pick up hints, tips, whatever it is, just ideas that they can use to develop their own work. But ultimately that is to me what's most important. That you produce work that you love, that you get inspired by, and that you're really happy to show people. So think about what I've said in this podcast. That's half of it, the creation part of it, creating your image and what you do with your camera, your composition, your subject, your lighting, all of these things. What you do when you're taking the, or even before that, imagining the image. But what you do when you take the photograph is important. What you do in post processing is important because that has a big impact on the final result. You can take a very bland looking photograph and with a couple of minutes work in something like Photoshop or lightroom, you can have something that is absolutely stunning and just grabs the viewer's attention. So this is all about learning how to use those packages and how to get the most impact from your images. So that's the first half of it. The second half you've got no control over basically. And that is, how other people view your work, whether they like it or don't, and how they respond to it. So again, my advice is always concentrate on the things that you have control over. So that's imagining the photograph, what you do when you take it, your post processing, then how you share it and who you choose to share it with, those are the things to really focus on. So that's it for this podcast. I hope you found that, interesting. It's a shorter podcast, but there you go. And I'll speak to you next time. Bye for now. Just before I go, I wanted to remind you that first, of all, I have an offer running with my free download. So if you go onto the website and there's a link at the bottom of the description of this particular podcast and that will take you to a link, to where you can give me your email. I will send you, a PDF, which is ten simple steps to improve your photography today. So, it includes the kind of things. That I talk about in the podcast. So it's all there in black and white. With some examples, you can see what's going on. And also remember, I offer, online photography courses. I do fine art. If you haven't checked out my galleries, please do. The links are again below the description of the podcast. And don't forget to help me out. So you're welcome to subscribe both to the podcast and you can become a member of my Patreon membership and, join me there. So in that membership, you get, access to me. and also you get advance notice of things that are coming up. I'll tell you about other things that are going on that I don't share in my Facebook group or on Instagram. Or anywhere else, really. So it is, just a membership where if you like what I do and you just want to be a part of it, the subscriptions are really low. It's just a cup of coffee a month. So, how much better could I be than that? So please take a look and I'll speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now.
