Question about professionals am I to critical??

[Deleted User]

A few months ago one of the gilrs at work left to have a baby, as a leaving present everybody clubbed together and ended up buying her a voucher for a photography studio so she could have some pictures taken of the baby.

Well at 3 months old she had the pictures of the baby taken and then e-mailed us at work copies of the pictures. Now personally I think many of the picutres are lousy. I am not suggesting I could do any better as I am not that good, but this guy\studio is supposed to be professional.

Now looking at the pictures it looks like she had the pictures taken at her house, several of them in the consevatory, it looks like it was a sunny days as there a lot of light reflection (from the glass roof) in the babies eyes. No attempt has been made to remove this, being a close up shot of the face\top half of the baby this reflection covered up to half the eye. Many of the pictures were soft, while I appreciate some picture styles away are meant to be a bit soft many of the pictures were unplesantly soft.

One particular picture was of the dad leaning over and kissing the childs cheek, but the angle at which the picture was taken (from the left) the entire right side of the picture was black as it was the dads body.

I won't be raising this with the girl as I don't want to ruin what she thinks are good pictures. Some of them are good pictures while the idea behind all the pictures was good, it just I think they have been badly done. As a keen photographer am I becoming to critical of other people work??

Tim

ShepsMom

The more you learn and know about photography, the more critical you will become with your own work, and work of others.
I must say, someone with an eye for photography can spot "bad shot" within seconds. May be what i know is not what someone else knows or likes, it's a personal preferences. I found it amazing what people would buy from "photoshoots with a pro", sometimes i just want to throw up!
So yes, to answer your question, you will be judging based on what you know and how much you know about the subject, nothing wrong with that.
Meanwhile, you can offer this girl your photo service

Van Isle

I've bumped in to that problem more than once, usually from friends who shelled out $60 or whatever for a department store family shoot. Fortunately you can usually find one or two shots in a series that are good, or that you can really comment favourably on. There is nothing to be gained by critiquing these shots, so you did good in not bringing these "flaws" to light.

And when you see someone who HAS paid the big bucks for a good shoot, WOW! It makes a heck of difference to get a pro to do the work. The difference between my friend's $60 baby shoot and his $260 shoot was night and day. Yay to good shooters!

VI

bham

Maybe the photographers style is photojournalistic and didn't look to pose them, so he just documented what happened, which could lead to some of the shots, not really prepared.

Also I have found that people will buy photos of themselves for the weirdest reason. Overall the picture could be bad in my opinion, but for some reason (they look skinny, younger, etc) they like the photo. These are photos of people she cares about and that all that will matter in 20 years when she looks at them.

Also these could be the proofs (unedited) that she got to view before actually ordering prints.

You obviously have developed an eye for judgement of photos, as most photographers do. We as photographers, are more critical of photos. Usually because we are judging the final output. But unless you were there and new all the constraints its unlikely you can know just what was happened and any limitations the photographer encountered (equipment problems, failures, honest mistake, etc).

In the end if the customer (the girl you work with) is happy with what she got, that's all that really matters. But you won't be referring customers to that photographer any more.