Have you taken some bad photos? I am here to face my own silly moments XD

Ever since I joined this community, there are so many talented people to make some impressive threads. I believe most of us keep trying to impress and inspire people by sharing the best of our work.

However today I decided to become an annoying person, to post some of my failed pics, with some explanation on why they failed, and how to avoid them.

-Lighting problem-

As a videographer, I do care about lighting, but only in real life. The biggest mistake I did was overlooking the same importance when taking photos of action figures. These might not occur for smartphone camera users because smartphone camera has a much higher tolerance against low light, and most of the time room light alone can already produce great photos. But as a rule of thumb, let the light hit the face from 45° angle to 80°, or otherwise even photoshop is not going to bring back to life










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-Angle problem-

Angle is the same issue I overlooked back then, just like a real person, there are very rare exceptional has a good looking at all angles, thus seeking the best angle before taking a photo is important...especially those joins....the awkward neckline XDD










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-Pose problem-

Last but not least, posing might not get deep down the road for everyone, because a normal, brain-functional collector, would not risk the breaking benjamin to make an extreme pose on their figure. But I have self-destructive behavior, I actually addicted to posing and losing some of my best figure bodies...For my advice, if you want to achieve some big poses, at least get some real person reference or try yourself, if you feel hurt doing some poses, the action figure literally feels the same way, not pain, but break.







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Misc problem....these are just wrong that I cannot explain, but just avoid this silly stuff, you have to be better than me










Alright, that's enough for me to insult myself today.....I hope you have a great day ahead if you survive this far.

Fantastic and oh so true! As a former videographer/photographer myself, I feel all of this deeply. Some things you can’t avoid, these aren’t real people after all, but there’s something to be said for those moments when you’re going through what you shot thinking “oh I got some great stuff!” only to realize that it’s either blurry, badly composed, the surroundings are not what you’d wish, etc etc. The part that kills is, of course, that you notice it. Friends and family, random folks on the internet? Nah, they’d never see it. But you know it’s there and that’s enough. The funnier (and honestly irksome) part is when you put a ton of effort into a shot to make sure it’s perfect and not quite getting there, only to then be screwing around with a different shot and the second photo is perfect. Can’t begin to tell you the hours I have sunk into getting that perfect lighting/composure for a shot, only to have that very thing happen. Lol. Such is a photogs life I suppose!

As a lighting designer and broadcast engineer I do agreed with you mostly however, Smart phone camera can not compete with a DSL cameras and  decent lenses for low light. It's just physically impossible to gather light through a tiny lens. Yes smart phone with dignity augment but as you know it's not the same. It would be nice to have ND filters selectable in a smart phone. Maybe there is but i don't know, certainly not mine.
Some of your darker lighting such as the drummer and cello player are actually spot on for a jazz club. The one one you showed as perfect lighting is great if you are simulating a studio shoot. Unfortunately the real world isn't like that. As you know an outdoor photo shoot requires reflectors, flags, softbox, scrims ect ect ect to make natural light look natural. I have also seen scenic photography with 100's of photos with various color filters overlayed.
My photos and the video i made are just experimenting crap.. Nothing serious yet. The video was made off an ipad 2 because it was newer than my iphone 6s at the time . I would love to set up the stage in one of the studios, video it with a $350k sony camera (cheap one)
but probably will be in my basement using a iphone 14.

MeMyself&I wrote:Fantastic and oh so true! As a former videographer/photographer myself, I feel all of this deeply.

Ikr!, there is always a perfect photo I poured all my heart and time to do it....it BLURS.... after putting in the computer and zooming in...and then the else are just backups, and they are the only batch which usable.....but not always the one I truly care......such a life

Slq32 wrote:As a lighting designer and broadcast engineer I do agreed with you mostly however, Smart phone camera can not compete with a DSL cameras and  decent lenses for low light. It's just physically impossible to gather light through a tiny lens.

True, the smartphone camera is nowhere to beat DSLR in terms of quality, the only benefit is practically using a smartphone to take photos, you are totally leaving out most, if not all the problems that a cameraman would face, the barrier is so low, that even a 5 years old can do the work, that's why I think smartphones have the most tolerance for most type of people. Iphone is one of the best smartphone cameras, you didn't lose much on that tiny glass, go ahead and looking for your new set up

Most of this makes very good sense, but a couple of these "bad" photos are actually not that bad at all. Of course, one is one's worst critic. I take comfort in lower expectations, but then again I'm not a photo/videography professional.

I totally feel you, great analysis of the things that happen in figure photography.

For me it's the worst when something feels too anatomically wrong in a pose.  And of course, necks and wrists are problematic too, and mismatching skintones. But there are always workarounds. And like Gubernator says, I am much less forgiving with the own pictures.

I think your darkly lit pics work really well still.

GubernatorFan wrote:Most of this makes very good sense, but a couple of these "bad" photos are actually not that bad at all. Of course, one is one's worst critic. I take comfort in lower expectations, but then again I'm not a photo/videography professional.

Yeah some of them failed in terms of technical that I am aware of, which most of us don't give high expectations in the first place. Like watching a movie, it is always fun to watch the story, instead of analyzing how the movie was made, which is boring. And luckily you are the first one

Ovy wrote:I totally feel you, great analysis of the things that happen in figure photography.

For me it's the worst when something feels too anatomically wrong in a pose.  And of course, necks and wrists are problematic too, and mismatching skintones. But there are always workarounds. And like Gubernator says, I am much less forgiving with the own pictures.

I think your darkly lit pics work really well still.

I do care about anatomy rules when posing, and doing a lot of experiments is both fun and frustrating, just about to settle the major problem and you thought you gonna take some stunning photos....it is blurred:cyclops: such a life

I gave up skin tone matching I never want to fix that thing unless I paint the body myself, which takes much more time and skill for that, and that definitely start killing my joy in this hobby

I applaud you, lawlaw91 - You have to be confident at photography to share your "failures." Truth is they are not failures just training exercises. For myself I take more photos I am not satisfied with than I do take photos I am happy with. I am still learning.

Titan wrote:I applaud you, lawlaw91 - You have to be confident at photography to share your "failures." Truth is they are not failures just training exercises. For myself I take more photos I am not satisfied with than I do take photos I am happy with. I am still learning.

Also got some self-destructive behavior involvedI know no one in the right mind would do this so I got you covered, I do the weird stuff so you all don't have to

Photography failures..a topic i've not seen covered in our hobby.

When looking at our members posting their latest work, tbh I'm not too fussed with the level of professionalism or how the lighting works or does not work or even where the pictures were taken or what kind of background the figure shot includes for that matter.

As an example: if you're sharing a military bash, I would like to see the loadout and whatever was modified or customised. As long as it's not too dark, or not too blurry and I can see what you've created, kitbashed or modified - then it's a winner regardless of the OP's skill level or if it was in an indoor or outdoor shoot.

......I'm taking a minute to imagine what our hobby would be like using film cameras !!
(I cried a little)

Allotropos wrote:Photography failures..a topic i've not seen covered in our hobby.

When looking at our members posting their latest work, tbh I'm not too fussed with the level of professionalism or how the lighting works or does not work or even where the pictures were taken or what kind of background the figure shot includes for that matter.

As an example: if you're sharing a military bash, I would like to see the loadout and whatever was modified or customised. As long as it's not too dark, or not too blurry and I can see what you've created, kitbashed or modified - then it's a winner regardless of the OP's skill level or if it was in an indoor or outdoor shoot.

......I'm taking a minute to imagine what our hobby would be like using film cameras !!
(I cried a little)

Yeah, you see this thread because I just happened to work as a cameraman, and skill level is an infinite topic that's why you rarely see people talking about it. in my case, problems like too dark or blurry photos become daily companions if any of the steps not going well when using a camera that requires manual settings, it is much easier to use a phone to take photos imo, but quality wise I took it personally. . I made this thread because I think I should learn to no longer be shy about what I did wrong (in my field), and also hope, if not necessary to convince people, making mistakes or "practicing" is a fun part, no matter in terms of photography, modify works or accessories matching etc

Thank you for reflecting and sharing your personal career in photography. To be able to pinpoint lighting within yuor own work is a sign of your talent. I remembered my first major study in photography was rolling the film in the dark room, this was at university, a art student thought I was taking too long and she flicked the switch... all my rolls were damaged.