Lessons

Lesson Info

Critique Yourself Part 2

so this is why I hesitate teo get the opinions of others regarding my favorite pictures because for every single picture that I post there are mixed reviews somebody tells me that it's their favorite somebody tells me that it's their least favorite and who can I trust and I think that a lot of us have the tendency to trust the negative side of things to say oh this person doesn't like it so they must be right this must be a bad picture because they said it isthe but we don't trust the people that say the good things so somebody says this is a great picture it's my favorite and then I'll be like your lying this is not your favorite picture because it's a bad picture because somebody told me that and I know it is and so that's terrible if you do that because then you're undermining yourself and all the creativity that you put into it so here we go again with you josh so we've got josh's favorite pictures from my portfolio now you've already seen my favorite pictures and my least favorite...

pictures now these air josh's picks so this is what he went through my portfolio my whole entire portfolio and he picked out these images as being his favorite pictures so do I agree kinda I'm not actually disappointed in the selection I got to say um the one on the side here with the more cp atones and the flowing fabric and what not that was my favorite image for a long time so we kind of are on the same page there and I do like the other images so I was happy with this but what I say this is my strongest work no I wouldn't not right now and that's just me that's me connecting to my own work and it doesn't matter if he feels the same way or not I'm not going to take him at face value and say oh well josh says that these are my best pictures so they definitely are my best pictures but I trust him enough to know that maybe these are strong images that I should look back at and these are his least favorite pictures for my portfolio so this was an extremely interesting selection in my opinion because one of these pictures sells really well which is really interesting because you don't like it and I get that because it gets mixed reviews trust ray on dh then we have another image the the first one on there where I'm sort of falling with the cp atones and that is actually one of my husband's favorite pictures and always has been and he talks about that as being a very strong piece and that's just a difference in style s so I thought that this was a really interesting selection and it was super exciting to see it so when I was meeting my in studio audience people on the internet I asked them to do this homework and I said you submit pictures from my portfolio that you don't like and a couple of them were like what I can't tell you what I don't like about your portfolio and I thought that was so awesome so guests I'm making them uncomfortable this is so great and they were able to submit these pictures and I don't take it personally and I think that nobody should if somebody says they don't like something that doesn't mean it's true that doesn't have to mean is true to you it's true to them and that's great and they don't have to like it and that can provide really great insight into maybe what the masses think is stronger or weaker but that doesn't mean that it's true so this is jen's favorite from my portfolio which I actually really overlooked this picture for a long time posted it didn't really think much of it thought it was fun to create and now I have had this picture in four shows and it's like people seem to like it and I'm really surprised and this is one of those instances of posting the picture wasn't a favorite didn't really think about it and now because of feedback that I've gotten a look at it in a different way it's still not my favorite picture I'm not being influenced by people saying oh I really like this but it makes me look at it and say what is it that people do like about this picture and there were things obviously that I like so I posted it I like it I created it it's not my favorite though and this is jen's least favorite from my portfolio which I thought was actually a pretty strong choice as elise favorite picture because I almost agree and it's not certainly not my least favorite however I can understand why you wouldn't be drawn to this picture as much as the other especially with it being you there aren't break colors and whatnot I know but but it's a bit stagnant and so I feel that there are two types of images in my portfolio the stagnant and the motion pictures and and I kind of separate things myself in that category and I tend not to like the stagnant picture pictures as much this is your bonds favorite from my portfolio which is a very old picture so I thought that was really interesting and this one was very personally special to me when I created it so I was really glad that you pulled that out and then this was your least favorite it's the but I get it oh my gosh I love it so it was so glad that you chose this yeah I call it the but it's just you know the name of the picture it's not really but that's what I call it so it's a creepy picture like this is a picture that I've gotten email about right when I posted it saying you shouldn't be allowed to post these images online and some people were upset about it and I get it I know that it's a creepy picture I know that this will not please a lot of people and I think that's awesome so the fact that you said that that you were like you know what I don't like this one is much I'm just like glowing inside like yes and made her uncomfortable you know like I love that and so I think that it's really good tio not just say you know why I did what what is your favorite what's release here but why is it your least favorite and what is it that you're not connecting to in this picture so let's take a look at our in studio audience is pictures there's josh so we have his favorite images from his portfolio and then we also have his least favorite so josh what is it about these images that you like specifically um the emotion and the color the emotion in the color I can see that so it seems like they're sort of mostly dis saturated with a specific color happening in them which is a through line that I see with these images which is really neat and the emotion so what emotions do you feel is it different emotions and it's just the fact that you see an emotion in it or is it one emotion that you're capturing no it's not one specific emotion each one is a unique moment yeah so you feel a connection emotionally to them you feel that the model is emoting in some way or that something is coming through I think that's really I connected to that as well when I saw these images of yours and I thought that they were strong choices from your portfolio and these are your least favorite images which I'm really glad that you have allowed me to do this now but I really asked permission but whatever so here we are we've got our beautiful lindsay adler down there which I thought was really fun so what were your reasons for disliking these um the larger one uh I think uh I I like that one a lot but it's not finished and they're all restrictive I couldn't really take them toe where I really wanted to take them yeah so they were almost like at face value and you didn't know where to go with that or yeah yeah okay sure I like that e so like the picture with lindsey is a perfect example where it was a spur of the moment there wasn't a lot of planning to it it was in an alley I was there to love you s o it was very spur of the moment it was it wasn't something I had a lot of control over so I couldn't tweak the things that I wanted to change but the part that I do like about it is being able to take it from what it wass to what it is yeah I can totally see that because I imagine that you did some really awesome work to this picture just knowing what those pictures were like in the alleyway and stuff so these air jen's favorite images and I love showing your work because it's always so diverse so vibrant and amazing so tell me why are these your favorite images I think because these all these were created in the last year um I think they represent more of me as the artist where you're going yeah this is more of where I'm going yeah and the one on the bottom right is I've never even hardly released to the public so it's like something I created for a contest that didn't win but I was like I created it for me and now I'm happy without came out I'm happy with the colors and happy with the vibe I'm just that's wonder yeah that's great so do you see like a through line with with these images something that connects each of them at all visually maybe or conceptually I like using the word a little bit surreal because it's like another environment that I just made up and yeah sometimes the textures will overlap sometimes thie ideas and the props actually will overlap because the first one on top is justus cellophane yeah and then my legs floating in mid air that's a hand skirt so it's like I took a prop from each one of these and kind of made this really cool environment out of it that's great so so these were your least favorite pictures and I think it's really interesting actually especially these examples from your portfolio because if we go back to this one used the word surreal and that was something that you said that I immediately agreed with I looked at this and I said yes this is surreal this sister realism like to the extreme I get that but then I look at these and this is more abstract to me not so much surreal because I can't really focus in on anything on a specific idea or figure anything but it's just very abstract to me and I think that there's a difference in your work from then till now in that progression do you agree or am I just pulling that out of you and this this is really good examples of the process that you have to go through and how they edit something seven times before I'm happy with it because the browns I just don't really they don't make me happy yeah and the grey it's funny you mentioned our inspiration by a rain puddle because that one was around that's great and I still don't know what technique I used to make those weird things but I was like I don't like yeah the other one is like a third or fourth revision and it's it's kind of cool because I created this weird moon but I don't like I just it's not doing it for me yeah as a whole so the colors okay but I was like and it's just not there yeah I understand okay so this was yvonne's favourite images and I thought that that one on top was so stunning and I mean I made it my desk back around for a little while actually I I don't know if you're supposed to do stuff like that but I did so yeah I really really like that image a lot so tell me about your favorite images aye well they're self portrait but uh which is hard for me to do and um but I like the real menace I like tea to show growth and I like rich colors and um I like toe to use photo shop but I like to also let like the pores of my skin show instead of of going in and we're moving some of the real miss yeah you name it I completely understand that so let me move on then to your least favorite and so I have these two here now what is it about thes that you're not comfortable with although they were planned uh I didn't sketch them and uh the detail yeah I didn't spend I spent quite a bit of time actually with them I just didn't get in there and really um you know shoot all of those elements in the scene at the time and then in pro the post processing I didn't really get in there and actually spend a lot of time I understand that so what I think is interesting is that you actually have two things that I would identify from these images to these as being very similar from one to the other which is the picture outdoors and then this picture outdoors they have the same whiting and I think that's interesting because I actually considered that one and this one to be very very similar and so I'm very interested to hear about your perspective between the two and we'll talk more later I'm really interested in why one is weaker than the other and that's why it's so great to critique yourself because I could stand here and tell you which ones I think are the strongest and the weakest and they might not be the same as what you chose but if you know why you think that then you can expand on that and refine it and that's what needs to happen to be able to create a portfolio that you love