willowdawn | Whidbey Island, Washington's Premier Photographer

Of course photography is an art and therefore has a level of subjectiveness to it, and every photographer has different areas of strength/weakness. BUT some qualities of photography are NOT subjective, and SHOULD be present in all photos that clients are paying for. Qualities such as COMPOSITION, CLARITY, COLOUR and EXPOSURE. These are non-negotiable qualities and if they are lacking, then it really is a BAD PHOTO. Keep these criteria in mind as you peruse the websites of photographers. I hope that they will help you to hire a photographer who will create the images you will LOVE, and not just because it’s your loved one in the photo.

Let’s look at some photos. These are photos I took, of my own daughter. I love all of them because, well, it’s my daughter and she’s beautiful. However, these photos ALL have problems. Some of them have deal breaker issues. Some of the problems are simply par for the course of the working conditions we had. (We were traveling and couldn’t countrol what time we arrived at certain locations to control the intensity or direction of the light… we had to take what we could get and as Tim Gunn says on Project Runway… “make it work.”)

So here is the first one, my beautiful girl in a grove of trees.

A lovely image, edited and shown in black and white. But let’s look at this photo closer. Can you see it’s biggest issue?

It’s out of focus. Not terribly, but the focus has clearly fallen somewhere other than her eyes – which is where the focus should be. Look again, I’ve zoomed in…

Can you see it now? As a mom, I’m willing to look past a few imperfections in a photo, but as a photographer – I have moved on, to an image that is, in fact, in focus. Here’s our second image we’re going to look at… same location, but I’ve walked to the left, and the sun came out from behind the clouds. And here you have proof that the sun does in fact shine occasionally in England!

This image is TACK sharp. So what is it’s major flaw? A flaw that makes it NOT worth showing to a client? Well, the dappled light coming through the trees has created areas of shadow and areas of blow outs. It’s a mottled mess. No matter how beautiful the subject – this is NOT a professional level photo and not worth editing. I did edit it to show that not even photoshop can “save” a photo taken in this kind of light. Now of I were at home I would have brought a diffusion panel with me and we could have happily shot in this location and gotten some amazing images… instead, I had to keep walking so I could get this which I’m showing edited, in black and white and then “grey scale”.

Sure this one has a bit of dappling on her hand, but since her face is NOT dappled, and I couldn’t diffuse and couldn’t go back another time (we flew home the next morning) I am willing to live with it. Her eyes are in SHARP focus.

But this brings us to another issue that is very common. TERRIBLE black and white images. All photo editing software has a “grey scale”, “desaturate” or “black and white” one click option. Yep, even my hugely expensive Photoshop has a couple of ways to turn a photo ugly with only one click! Whooo hooo, what a time saver!!! Except, it looks terrible. Always.

There are as many ways to turn a photo black and white as there are professional photographers. And each photographer has the “recipe” or method that they prefer and which suits their style of photography. But NO ONE should EVER be “desaturating” or turning an image “grey scale”.

Can you see the difference in the photos above? In the middle image, the whites of her eyes are – wait for it – WHITE! A black and white image should have tones of both black and white – and not just some middle shades of grey. Here’s another image with even more dramatic results.

Quite a difference isn’t it? Which black and white image would YOU prefer to purchase?

So we’ve discussed clarity (photos should be IN focus) and touched a bit on exposure (no extreme light or dark areas – blow outs etc)… now let’s talk about colour. This one is sooooo common. I’m not sure who keeps telling photographers to add contrast to their images or that they need a bit more saturation… but here’s what happens when I use my handy dandy Photoshop and just bumped both saturation and contrast, then applied an “unsharp mask” (another new photographer’s favorite tool!). I’ve taken this beautiful image from this:

To this:

But I’ve still not achieved the rich beautiful colour in the wall, as shown in the top image. Photo editing, to bring the best in an image out, is an art. It’s not a simple click of a button, any more than taking a beautiful photo is as simply as clicking the shutter release button. When you are looking at photographers’ websites, ask yourself… “is that child REALLY that red/orange/grey/white in real life? Have I ever seen a REAL person with that colour skin?” Of course each person has their own skin tone, but so often, we are shown photographs which have no basis in reality. And I don’t know about you, but I want photos of my children to LOOK like my children.

Let’s look at the most subjective criteria now… composition. Let me be honest with you… I think a lot of what is called art, is rubbish. And I don’t pretend to be the end all, be all photographer with no room to improve… so I expect a lot of folks will argue that composition isn’t as crucial as the above points, but I personally feel it is just as important as an image being properly exposed, in focus and with life like skin tones (provided it’s a portrait that is supposed to have natural skin tones, but you know what I mean!) In my humble opinion, you can have a properly exposed and focused image and it will be BORING or, just plain awkward – if the composition is off. Let’s look at some examples.

Here’s a boring photo of a bride, walking.

and for comparison – the same bride, shot from a slightly different angle and positioned in the bottom corner of the image. (and for the record, I didn’t shoot the centered bride, centered… I cropped it like that to show my point!)

And here is a sweet little three year old. Centered, and well, boring.

Same image – as I shot it, and not cropped.

Can you see the difference between the centered (booooooring) compositions and those where the subject is off centered? And this is not to say that centered never works, but it needs to be intentional and purposeful – like this image. Having her eyes and the flask centered is design feature and I’ve used symmetry to strengthen the impact of the image.

Pat yourself on the back if you’ve read all of this. I hope that it will help you as you search for the photographer who is right for you. Who will capture and freeze the moments of you and your family’s lives. Rest assured that as a mom I have and love, years worth of photos with all sorts of fatal flaws. And as you are snapping the daily moments of your family, a “flawed” image shouldn’t always be tossed into the rubbish – but neither should it be paid for.

When the photo is of someone we love, our love can cloud our vision – and allow us to make excuses for poor products. So start judging photographers websites with these criteria – looking only at people you don’t know. Judge the photos, and not the subject. If he/she can deliver well executed portraits for a variety of different clients – then and only then – should you trust them to capture your loved ones.

Oh and if you’ve have in fact read this, please leave a comment below – even if only to tell me I’m crazy. I wonder if I’m talking only to myself sometimes and I always value feedback. And I believe this is a great topic for discussion so as long as the discussion stays civil – I’ll leave all comments.