www.fstoppers.com/contests The Art Behind The Headshot: fstoppers.com/product/art-beh... Illuminating The Face: fstoppers.com/product/peter-h... Perfecting The Headshot: fstoppers.com/product/peter-h...
I'm the photographer who shot the photo @38:27 . Thank you so much for all of the great feedback! It's a huge honor to have my image seen by you guys and get critiqued!
For me this was my favorite photo. I totally disagree with their view on the subject’s expression as I feel I works. I see what they’re saying about maybe cooling the image down but beyond that I think it really works. Has a sort of SiFi or the show Severance vibe to it. Excellent image as far as I’m concerned!
I am delighted to have won the third prize, thank you very much! Thank you also for bringing a constructive review on my 2 images present in the top10. The small hair on the face that make so much talk have been deliberately preserved to maintain a natural aspect to this portrait, leaving this defect that takes only a few seconds to remove is a desire not to seek at all costs the perfect photo, rightly or wrongly, but totally assumed. Thanks again Peter and Lee!
Thank you for the criticism of my work (The last photo). I disagree with almost everything Peter said, but It's always enjoyable to participate and find out what others think.
I loved your photo, it's the only one out of the ten that I remember seeing and rating. The light is beautiful and the dust gives an ethereal quality to the subject, definitely a memorable portrait, well done!
Your very talented, critiques are useless because they fall into two categories. 1. I hate it because it's not my style. 2. I like it because it is my style.
It is indeed a good tip to generally not give people with thin hair harsh kicker light. I don't find it disturbing here but am curious what others think about this. I could be wrong.@@brett_s_photography
Congrats to the winners!!! I wish Peter had a chance to look through the entries and pick his own top 10. I confess myself disappointed, possibly jealous because I was so excited about this concept, and I didn't see what i was expecting about expressions. Thanks though for your efforts.
Idk why they would invite someone who is an expert in a given area of photography... and then not let them be the person to pic the top 10 shots? This whole contest doesn't make a lot of sense to me... it seems like it has been very poorly exectuted from top to bottom. Even the discussions on the contest page on their website are primarily expressing concerns regarding the user rating system... yet nothing about the rating system was adjusted in the slightest. Then we have these top 10 shots that were picked... of which at least 8/9 of the 10 would probably find themselves in the bottom 100 of the 1100+ submissions if "expressions" had any actual bearing on the evaluation process. Yet here we are... a top 10 that consists of 8 shots that are quite literally expressionless faces, and 2 that are questionably showing signs of an ever so slight expression. Lame.
Hello, I am the #2 place winning photographer and I am very grateful, thank you very much for the criticism to Peter and Lee. I have seen comments saying that possibly my photograph and others have been created with AI, I take it as a compliment because the photograph was taken and published on my Instagram in 2018. I congratulate all the participants, I saw really beautiful work.
I get why you might be getting such comments. In the particular image for example, have you retouched out the armpit? Or, extended the image a bit with generative fill that missed defining the arm? It just seems a bit unnatural to me, no?
18:25 is brilliant! It may not be technically very good as a portrait, but the image is brilliant. By far my favourite of this set. It has very interesting graphic look, the composition is haunting and the style is a nod to the surrealists. But the most interesting thing is that the lightning with the facial features creates the optical illusion of the face being viewed from the side or the 3/4 look depending on how your eyes set on it.
I love how all the bots are first to comment and the comments are always generic, either "Nice" or an Emoji. They don't say something like your thumbnail reminds me of that awful coldplay song, Yellow that was big in the early oughts. I like loud Peter better than Secret Peter. Fstoppers you guys make such good content!
It's interesting hearing Peter talk about creative portraits. It's very clear he looks at all of them from a headshot point of view, and it brings alot of different views to the table. Even if I don't necessarily agree with him, it's interesting to hear how different people think about a portrait.
I appreciated Peter Hurley's observations which I think we would have appreciated even more if there had been more photos to comment on. Like all the questions that arose while trying to understand what kind of experiences were behind that face of the man with the turban. As for me, apart from the gentleman with the yellow turban and two other portraits, the rest of the choice leaves me very perplexed, not because of the quality of execution but because of the fact that these are not intriguing faces, but good-looking ones. This of course is my personal opinion.
Not more, different. Every headshot is a portrait, not every portrait is a headshot. Portraits may be blurred by narrative layers and additional elements. Headshot must catch attention with its well-presented face, and only with this. Its way harder to get captivating headshot. than eye catchign portrait. Portraits got more elements, but headshot need more knowledge. Simple photos of peoples that are hard to capture right way.
@@jakubstrumilloYeah, but I would not prefer a fashion headshot portrait over a meaningful and interesting portrait. I see fashion photos everywhere and everyday. If it was a fashion photography contest, probably I would agree to choose these kind of photos.
A lot of blank stares and slight smirks in the bunch.... kind of disappointing given the contest video said something to the effect of "we want to see those expressions that tell us a story". So... where are the expressions? Top 10 on display here is literally just a group of headshots... of which is categorically different than "Portraits/Expressions". This is like if a car photo contest winner was a shot where the frame was filled with a tire..... where's the car? Where's the expressions?? Where's the story??? Based on these choices, the contest theme should have just been "studio headshots". Yaaawwnnnnn....
23:03 I like the strap. I don't like the framing. They should have done 1:1. There's waaaaaay too much hat in the top. They just need to come in more. Only thing missing is a catch light for me. 4/5
I can see from a meter away that the "dust" in the last shot is not real. It's a Photoshop brush. The edges are too harsh. With a much softer touch on it, I'd love it!
Some solid, technical work, yes but nothing strikes me to my heart. And that’s so important in a portrait. You may as well be shooting mannequins. The model must emote!
@@ScribblebytesWorldwide It’s a great shot, full of character but I’ve seen thousands of photographs of old Indian men in colourful turbans. The rest of the selected shots were lifeless. Beautiful but lifeless.
Perhaps there should have been a specific category? Street portrait. Natural light portrait. Studio portrait. Candid portrait. Character portrait. Gotcha portrait. Fashion/beauty portrait. You could run a competition every week! That’s a lot of giveaways!
@Graveltongue I have to agree. The winning image is boring. I keep thinking how they asked for "faces and expressions." None of these 10 work for me. Now that said, I come from a newspaper photog, photojournalism background. IMO many, most maybe, on Fstoppers only want to see highly polished, toned, touched up, "shopped", fashion, pretty people and almost perfect portraits. All of that is a no-no in photojournalism. And real is just not well liked on sites like Fstoppers. And neither Peter or Lee are photojournalists. Bat ya, while the top 10 are nice, nothing grabs me at all.
The community under voting the top images 3 out of 5 is very telling how jealous people are. I saw fantastic images rated 2. something out 5. I agree with the winner image but the 2nd and 3rd are more like proffesional fashion head shots with professional models. Pretty shallow.
Peter Hurley demonstrates a depth of understanding and analysis in this video that often gets lost in his live shoots. It makes me want to get to know him better. Thanks, guys.
I truly LUV Hurley !!! BUT You have a DIW (Dyed In the Wool) Guy.. Who does the SOSED (Same Old Shit Every Day) commenting on what He does not do :) :) :) BUT I photographed the Guy in the first place Photo and he is only 42 years old !!!!!!!!
I don't fully understand the "Streaming" nature of the $25 offer on the Art Behind the Headshot tutorial. I this a one-time access where I would need to devote four straight uninterrupted hours to watch with no ability to review it a second time? Or is it delivered in a mode that can be viewed piecemeal and can be reviewed a second time? I know I must sound like a complete novice to not understand how this works. Perhaps that's because I am 81 years of age. Can someone explain the implications of this terminology to an old geezer?
Thanks. I'll likely sign up. At 81, I am doing less photography that involves being in the field and I'm focusing (no pun intended) more and more on the portrait genre. After all, friends of my age will shortly need obituary photos, 😊😊 I am familiar with Peter's RU-vid offerings (I'm a subscriber), but presumably this will include some new information he hasn't made available for free..
This is interesting, but also kind of disappointing. The contest was supposed to be 'Portraits/Expressions', but all the chosen images just had blank expressions. No smiles, no interesting expressions. Lee didn't mention to Peter that it was 'Portraits/Expressions', but Peter did call out all the 'non-existent facial activity'. I noticed there was no mention of the community scores. While I often disagree with them it's still interesting to compare to the 'pro' scores.
Image #3 is of a model I know and I can't imagine why the photographer submitted that photo of her, she has tons of portraits that are leagues beyond that and I'm sure they got better images than that over the course of a photoshoot. That really bugs me for some reason.
@@FStoppers yes that's the they I was referring to, I'm suprised that the photographer decided to submit that image, obviously you have no control over what images people submitted
Yeah my issue with this was that they were all Lee's picks. Should've had Patrick's input and then they could each have a top 5. I gotta believe there were more interesting shots, but it's all subjective...
The problem with having a headshot photographer critique creative portraits is that everything is just technical observations. Headshots are boring for a reason, they are generic. Gesture, expression, concept , interesting light, outweigh minor technical considerations to everyone but photographers pixel peeping.
Very clear who knows portrait photography (Peter) and who does not (Lee). The portrait is not only headshots. Lee, you should check on YT to see the 10 best portrait photographers ever. It looks like Peter didn't feel comfortable with your choices, especially with your Photoshop bs.
Is the dude that pretty much always cuts off the top of people's heads complaining about a to tight crop? Okay. . . His headshots are perfect, and often super boring. Great to watch his videos to learn how to act and handle a client, and then you use that to take actually interesting headshots with character.
Omg some of these shots are far more interesting than anything Peter Hurley has done . Peter’s work is very boring to me to be honest . Thank god for photographers like Anton Corbijn who break away from The kind of work Peter does and likes !
The fact that you rated a random boring street-style portrait higher than a creatively lit photo with some thought behind it is telling here. Sure, the guy's pupil was huge, but that shot was leagues ahead of the shot before it. You're nuts.
Don’t diss the degree of difficulty capturing good street portraits. So much harder than studio portraits where you can control everything from the model to the backdrop to the lights.
@FStoppers - regarding the portrait of a man with a top hat under hard light - you just don't get it. there is an art style like that, look once again carefully. if you look on the whole picture - it's a portrait of a man. but then if you focus just on a highlights on his face - it looks like profile photo. do you really think that it's that easy to create such effect with a light? and i'm not an author, i just saw similar art paintings previously.
