Anyway, after that I started going to his blog. Not long after the guest blog post, he started doing critiques of other photographers web sites, and their work. (People volunteer to be critiqued). I have now watched 10 video critique posts by Zack Arias and Meg (his wife). There is so much content in there to talk about, and I have learned a lot. Some of which I knew, some of which reinforced things I was thinking about, and other stuff that that I am thankful to have learned now. There would be too much content to try to cover it indepth in one post, so I thought I would really just summarize in point form what I got out of his videos.

While I was watching these critiques, I took brief notes. This is really a summary of the notes I took. I am not getting into discussion of these points too much here, but there is a ton of material for further discussion. The material¬†is also collected from across the 10 posts, not in a order by post. I would encourage you to start from post one and just start viewing. Some of these things he hits on many many times, and it becomes more obvious when you take notes because you see the patterns you have written down.¬† There tends to be more “Don’ts” in the photo galleries section¬†and more¬†”Do’s“¬† in the sections on¬†his thoughts on what kinds pictures to take.

Web Sites in general

• What are you trying to say?
• What impression does your site give?
• Do your photographs match your intended image?
• Stay on target, Stay on message.

Photo Galleries

• Kill the crap photos
• Keep each gallery to a single theme
• Limit each gallery to your very best images
• Strong images don’t bring weak ones up
• Don’t post multiple images of the same photo with different actions/treatments
• Don’t post multiple images of same person usually (unless it is a specific gallery¬†for this person)
• Don’t post multiple images of same boat/building/etc
• Don’t mix personal images (or projects) with professional ones
• No horizontal scroll to the web site
• Keep photo style/treatment/tone/actions consistent through out¬†a¬†gallery

Photography

• Watch wide angle shots with people – people to middle
• Watch depth of field to get rid of background – especially wide shots
• Careful of dead center “sniper” photo’s
• Think of angles you are shooting at before the shot to keep in mind background
• Move eye around frame to see what is unnecessary and still in frame
• Watch consistent exposures especially at weddings
• Use people in landscape and abstract shots to give sense of scale
• Don’t forget to take shots with empty space
• When composing photos outside, decide what you want to see and what you don’t want to see
• Watch for lines intersecting with model, especially head

Take interesting pictures:

• Find a frame within a frame
• Focus on¬†unsual subjects
• Look for lines and shapes and shades and colors
• Layer your images
• Use reflections in mirrors
• Make use of negative space
• Make your compositions so they tell a story
• Find your frame and wait for the decisive moment
• Locate¬†a clean spot for objects (no intersecting lines unintended)

Style Don’ts (For lack of better word)

• Don’t tilt camera for the sake of tilting the camera
• Don’t apply random actions to try to make pictures better
• Don’t¬†use selective color

Focus

• Focus, specialize. Limit what you shoot so you can get good at something
• Target your marketing dollars
• You have to work your way up – Shoot tee ball before you try to shoot the world series
• Shoot every family that comes in front of you as if they are a celebrity
• Give every client (even free) the same¬†attention, time, respect and effort you would give your “dream” client¬†
• If you don’t have – don’t show it
• Work your ass off – go get it

This last section, especially the focus on one type of photography,¬†is what I am having the most difficulty with. On the surface I agree with him. If you only shoot one type of photography, ie weddings, seniors, commercial, fashion, etc. then you will get good at that type of photography. If you try to shoot maternity, and high fashion, and landscapes, you won’t be able to shoot any of them enough to get good at any of them. It also makes a lot of sense from an image perspective. You don’t try to show to mothers that you can shoot baby pictures beside images of girls in bikinis. The “image” that you are trying to project just doesn’t jive.

On the other hand, I am having a hard time getting enough people to take pictures of to concentrate on only one type. It seems to me that family portraits, weddings and senior shots can merge together. Weddings are a great deal different than shooting senior pictures though!

The material in these videos is priceless, and well worth taking your time to watch them and hear him tell you to get off the web and shoot pictures

The highlight of the day (for me anyway) was the creative lighting session done by Zack Arias. But I missed it. I was out, and didn’t get back until just after his part was over, and someone else was talking about lighting toys/models creatively. It was interesting, but I had wanted to hear Zack.

Lucky for me, Zack has posted his presentation in PDF form, and has a Q&A thing going on¬†at his blog. At the end of the second presenter, they also said they would put the presentations online, but I haven’t seen them yet.

Theses are really amazing on so many levels. First of all is how well he can do a critique in 5-7 minutes of someones work. Now granted, it looks like he spends some time before hand looking at a site before doing the video. Zack has a good eye for photographs, and a good understanding of web presence.

I have been taking notes as I watch. Some of the most useful information in the first few episodes has to do with how you present your work, more specificly how you present it on your web site. Some of the things that come up over and over are:

• Show me who you are. Only post pictures of the type that show the type of photographer you are and the type of work you want.
• Only post one version of a given picture (not color and B/W)
• Only post a picture of any given model once. Pick the best one.
• Don’t use the same building, boat, object more than once.
• Only use your BEST work. Your best work will not pull up your weaker stuff, your weaker stuff will pull down your best work.

One of the biggest take aways so far is going to be the most difficult for me. This is the “show me who you are” part. I have a hard time with that. I really like shooting my kids – no money in that,¬† landscapes – you have to be really good at that (and travel), flowers – how do you sell that, and portraits – I have just started. So, if I want to take pictures of people, seniors, weddings, engagements, etc, I need to have a site focused on that, but I don’t have many pictures like that yet. I’ve got to put in the work. Funny about that eh? Until my pictures of people are better than my pictures of flowers, I am not going to have a great website to show people my “work”.

I have some lighting stuff coming. I need to be more agressive about getting oportunities to take peoples pictures to both get better at it, and to build my portfolio.

To switch gears, I feel bad for some of the people. The girl that shot the wedding with her camera on auto, direct on camera flash, crooked pictures and poor cropping made me cringe. I sure hope my first wedding doesn’t go like that. He also has people submitting their flickr account with ony pictures of their kids on it and asking what they need to do to make money at this. Yeesh.

I feel that my pictures are squarely in the middle of what he has seen. I don’t take as good of pictures as the ones he has praised, but I sure don’t take as bad of pictures as the ones he trashes. My web site on the other hand would be trashed. I really need to work on my web presence.

The other think that is interresting is that I don’t always agree with him on the shots that he thinks are amazing. I almost always agree with his “chuck” pile, but some of the pictures he like I find my self scratching my head. One thing that appears to be a trend is to shots that are very close to blown out. There are lots of pictures that look overexposed to me that he thinks have great lighting. I am new to the whole being critical of photography/art thing, and I suppose that we might just have different tastes.

It would be interresting to get a critique of my photo’s. He already has a billion submissions, and my I need to work on my site before I would want to have that part looked at.

I really need to look at where I am going as a photographer. Where are you going?