Hmph.

I did this recently:

Mr. Edward Hyde

The shoot itself was a lot of fun.  The models are my sister, and a guy that we were in Spamalot with.  They said they also had fun.  An acquaintance of mine on Facebook shared the link to her page as well, and a friend of hers criticized them.  A lot of his criticism was of a technical nature, i.e. truncation of limbs/bodies, what he called "bland processing" (not sure what he is referring to there – he lives across the pond so maybe it’s common jargon over there?), the fact that some of the images have "wonky" horizons, and the fact that the images aren’t tack sharp.

It’s the first REAL hard criticism of my work.

So, I went into this shoot not really planning on it being technically sound.  The lens I currently have is complete shit – it’s the kit lens that came with my camera body, and it’s noisy & slow & whatever else.  So I was personally displeased with how out of focus and grainy the images look.  Still.  It kinda really hurt to have someone ignore the emotion & story  I was trying to capture and just pick it apart as coldly as he did.  I went and had a look at his stuff, which I personally don’t think is all that exciting either (his stuff is here: Steve Kemp ) so I was kind of like, where the fuck does he get off telling me my work is shit when his is boooooring?  Ah well.  I asked for a clarification and he "kindly" told me what my work was lacking in his opinion, and I just tried to be gracious & not be an asshole like he was being.

Yes, I have a long way to go.  But the people who matter to me really like the results, including the models, so I will content myself with that, and start saving for a better lens.  So there!