Model Insider Forums
General Discussion
Do you have a pic people love...but...
I just put up a new Gallery entitled, "Controversy...Oooooo" in which I placed one of my pics that I definitely have a love/hate situation with. I'd post it here for the sake of this discussion, but am an admitted noob on Forum-Pic-Posting. If somebody can give me a crash course on how to do it, I'll edit this post with a copy of the image in question.
Anyway...this image in question is from my very first photoshoot...and it shows. Loose ropework (epecially on the brunette...the wrists look loose enough that she could easily free herself), sloppy tying, overlapping ropes, rope ends that're a mile long...you get the picture. The thing that amazes me is that people seem to love the image...it's the most commented one at my MM port. I get comments like, nice shot, great ropework, excellent angle...all of which I say, "Huh??" to.
What makes me dislike the image is the level of some hatred I've gotten because of it...one person placed a comment asking, "Should we call the police?" I PM'ed the person and asked for a clarification...at which point, he likened the shot to a "trophy" shot from a serial killer...and said a few other horrible things I won't repeat.
To sum up...I've gotten accolades and outright hatred from that shot...which makes me love and hate it at the same time, leading me to this question of the Forum:
Do you have a shot that people love, but you secretly hate? Which one and why?
Hot, desert bondage at TucsonTied... http://www.tucsontied.com/
Your shot does have kind of a snapshot/realistic look to it which is going to make some people like it more and some like it less. It probably doesn't help that one model looks happy and one upset so people can project anything they want into it.
To answer your question... I wouldn't say I *hate* it, but people really like this image - I've sold a bunch of copies including probably 3-4 platinum prints, and while I like it OK I know what a salvage job it is. It's 90% desaturated because she had a terrible tan line that I didn't know what else to do with it, and I didn't like the way it looked in pure black and white however I was converting at the time (looks great as a platinum print luckily). And that dark area on the right was my attempt to blend in the line from the shutter curtain because somehow I'd bumped a setting and the sync was off. And now that I'm looking at it, the crop on the bottom's screwy - looks like I cut through her knees. And some people have commented negatively on the amputated arm thing.
I guess I could go back and fix a lot of that in post these days, but basically I've never liked it enough to bother and it sells and I don't know why so I'm kind of afraid to touch it!
Doug Wade wrote:
Your shot does have kind of a snapshot/realistic look to it which is going to make some people like it more and some like it less. It probably doesn't help that one model looks happy and one upset so people can project anything they want into it.
To answer your question... I wouldn't say I *hate* it, but people really like this image - I've sold a bunch of copies including probably 3-4 platinum prints, and while I like it OK I know what a salvage job it is. It's 90% desaturated because she had a terrible tan line that I didn't know what else to do with it, and I didn't like the way it looked in pure black and white however I was converting at the time (looks great as a platinum print luckily). And that dark area on the right was my attempt to blend in the line from the shutter curtain because somehow I'd bumped a setting and the sync was off. And now that I'm looking at it, the crop on the bottom's screwy - looks like I cut through her knees. And some people have commented negatively on the amputated arm thing.
I guess I could go back and fix a lot of that in post these days, but basically I've never liked it enough to bother and it sells and I don't know why so I'm kind of afraid to touch it!
Thanks for the respond, Doug! Addressing the first part, here's a copy/paste of one of the many comments I've gotten on that shot...
"love the contrast, one happy, one not so much"
And the weirdness on that pic continues...lol. I don't know what to say...I was gonna mention that myself, but remembered that that was one of the things that somebody LIKED about that shot...grumble. The "snapshot" look, chalk up to the market that I shoot for...they want the stuff to look like that...so I shoot what they want.
Your pic is FAB, by the way...I love it. I see the things that you mention, but still, why change what your market seems to like?
And just for the sake of saying it, I edited the title of this thread a bit..."hate" is too strong a word..."dislike" seemed better.
Hot, desert bondage at TucsonTied... http://www.tucsontied.com/
I think we've all got images that we dislike and others like. Proximal bias is a strong thing. We know all those little things that are "wrong" (or that we messed up) with them, while others don't know/see them, for whatever reason. It's like the difference between a models "best of set" pick and a shooters "best of set" pick almost always being different.
To embed images in your posts on this (and almost all) boards, use BBCode:
[img]the%20url%20to%20the%20image%20without%20spaces[/img]
There's also a button just above the text entry field. Click on that button and it automatically places the img tags, and you'll need to paste the url between the tags.
I love this one of Doug's, and if anyone has bought any of Iona I would be shocked, somehow I keep feeling I did a shit job that day looking at the gallery, I keep feeling that my images should have been cut because they are not as strong as the rest of the galleries.
But there are people out there who love the work I hate.
Doug even told me he wanted natural, not posed, that is what people buy...
M. Carle wrote:
http://www.san-francisco-nudes.com/sample/img_1983.htm
I love this one of Doug's, and if anyone has bought any of Iona I would be shocked, somehow I keep feeling I did a shit job that day looking at the gallery, I keep feeling that my images should have been cut because they are not as strong as the rest of the galleries.
Helena's an amazing model - I use that light all the time but I think that's still my favorite with that lighting.
I sold a couple of Iona 8x10s just a few days ago, so there.
M. Carle wrote:
Doug even told me he wanted natural, not posed, that is what people buy...
I don't remember exactly what I said but I think with the outdoor stuff in particular it's easy to over do the posing. And a lot of the stuff that sells is very simple, or at least looks very simple. Like this image: doesn't look super posed but there's a lot of subtle things she's doing right. But it can be really hard to get a model to just let a hand relax and fall naturally - everybody always wants to put it someplace artificial.
Model Insider Forums
General Discussion
Do you have a pic people love...but...