Critique Man in a suit studio portraits

LongLensPhotography

LongLensPhotography

Th..th..that's all folks!
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LongLensPhotography
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I'm looking for critique on these. Are they basically good enough?
It was a rather nightmarish shoot of one of the past RE clients. It's not what I typically do but maybe I will do more of it from now on. I've never worked with someone as impatient as this. After barely getting my lights just barely setup on location (2nd of his locations as first one was full of junk, no space and strong smell of tobacco) he was out after 5min, so that's all I managed in that timeframe. Then he showed me how quick he can do it on his phone as a self! The clothes were a disaster, wrong fit, etc. I have a bad feeling my watermark was too subtle to do the job!

20200201-_U1A1607-Edit.jpg20200201-_U1A1610-Edit.jpg20200201-_U1A1614-Edit.jpg
 
Overwhelmingly look soft to me, was that the look you were going for?
 
gramps said:
Overwhelmingly look soft to me, was that the look you were going for?
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100% CROP. Judge for yourself. I really can't control how forum handles files. edit: I see it is resized down to 1024 from 1280 and looks bad... Mods please take note on this.

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What were you trying to achieve?

If a functional catalogue look to show off the suit (badly fitting or otherwise!) then yes you’ve achieved your goal. No more a portrait though than a shot in the Next catalogue is a portrait.
 
Brazo said:
What were you trying to achieve?

If a functional catalogue look to show off the suit (badly fitting or otherwise!) then yes you’ve achieved your goal. No more a portrait though than a shot in the Next catalogue is a portrait.
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He asked specifically for a full body {business??? presumably} portrait in a suit on white... That's what I tried to do. I doubt it is as good as Next catalog ones but if it's close then that's OK. I mean general posing and lighting.... keeping in mind that's just ~5min of the actual shoot.
 
Good enough for What? personally I think they should be condemned to the “well that didnt work bin” floating models is my pet hate, white shirt on white back ground, and so on, I understand it is what the client wants, but sometimes if the images are going to be truly horrible, you have to step back, or make absolutely sure your never linked to them.

Why did you shoot it? The guy looks like an arse in the images, was clearly an arse in the shoot, you should have told him to do one.
 
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Brazo said:
What were you trying to achieve?

If a functional catalogue look to show off the suit (badly fitting or otherwise!) then yes you’ve achieved your goal. No more a portrait though than a shot in the Next catalogue is a portrait.
Click to expand...

LongLensPhotography said:
He asked specifically for a full body {business??? presumably} portrait in a suit on white... That's what I tried to do. I doubt it is as good as Next catalog ones but if it's close then that's OK. I mean general posing and lighting.... keeping in mind that's just ~5min of the actual shoot.
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Sorry that wouldn’t pass as a bad catalogue shot, let alone a functional one. And it not even close to to the quality of the next catalogue, I mean you have a rubbish model, rubbish clothing, bad lighting, bad poses, over exposed, and only 5 mins to get the shot and you have the front to even consider comparing it to the shots the next studios achieve.

So imho they are no good, however, all that said, if your client is happy and you are happy to put your name to them, then at the end of the day that’s all that matters.
 
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LongLensPhotography said:
He asked specifically for a full body {business??? presumably} portrait in a suit on white... That's what I tried to do. I doubt it is as good as Next catalog ones but if it's close then that's OK. I mean general posing and lighting.... keeping in mind that's just ~5min of the actual shoot.
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As a portrait I would hope it would tell me something about the person or that I would have an insight into their lives or have some form of engagement with them. This doesn’t achieve that it’s too sterile.
 
Studio488commercial said:
Sorry that wouldn’t pass as a bad catalogue shot, let alone a functional one. And it not even close to to the quality of the next catalogue, I mean you have a rubbish model, rubbish clothing, bad lighting, bad poses, over exposed, and only 5 mins to get the shot and you have the front to even consider comparing it to the shots the next studios achieve.

So imho they are no good, however, all that said, if your client is happy and you are happy to put your name to them, then at the end of the day that’s all that matters.
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Thank you for your response. Could I just ask how would you approach this shoot? You have no choice over clothing, model and spec. Thanks

They are certainly not portfolio images and will never go near it.
 
LongLensPhotography said:
Thank you for your response. Could I just ask how would you approach this shoot? You have no choice over clothing, model and spec. Thanks

They are certainly not portfolio images and will never go near it.
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No choice over model, clothing and spec is normal, the lighting is way off IMHO, as is the angle of the camera, you are way too high, if the client has given you 5 mins then simply say it cannot be done in that time scale, unless you are replicating something you have done a dozen times then its going to be a rush job and you will either be lucky or it will be wrong, I tend not to use luck as a factor.
 
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Only the last one doesn't work for me.
If he's not looking at the watch, then the pose just looks contrived.
He also appears to be floating.
 
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