Tuesday, July 17, 2012

My HUGE Pet Peeve: Fauxtographers

Usually I don't complain about people/stuff like this, but lately this has been bothering me so much!

I think it's great that there are so many military spouses who want to contribute financially to the household and make names for themselves by doing their own thing. However, within the military community there seems to have been an epidemic that turned every other wife into a photographer. Or as I've seen it on the internet, fauxtographer. It seems as though just about anyone with a DSLR camera and Adobe Photoshop is opening up their own photo business.

Recently, one of the Soldiers from Hubs' unit came back and his family hired an Army wife to take their pictures. They came out awful. AWFUL. I feel bad that they had to pay for the pictures that were taken of their loved one coming home. I'm no pro, but even I could see that the lighting and composition was completely off in all of these photos. Of course they were over edited with a ton of artistic effects. What's the point of the picture when you can't even see your daughter running to her daddy because her skin color blends in with the background?

I don't necessarily think that an individual needs to go to school to become a pro in a certain trade, it absolutely takes a ton of practice though. If you have no idea what an f-stop is or how changing it affects the picture, you probably have no business charging for the pictures you take.

An additional point to this pet peeve is when these "business" pages are set up on Facebook and the grammar/spelling is wrong, wrong, wrong! It's third grade English people!

Your =/= you're
Their =/= there =/= they're
Then =/= than

Nothing makes me crazier than a "professional" page that I can't even read in its entirety because none of the wording makes sense.

6 comments:

  1. When people write "alot" instead of "a lot", drives me bonkers! I definitely agree that it seems like the new stay at home mom fad is to become a photog. And a lot of them are just point and shoot picture takers.

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  2. Totally agree with you! I do photography on the side (and by on the side, I mean if I'm there and already taking pictures of my children I can take some of yours and if they turn out well, then GREAT!) I have friends that think they are a gift to the photography world and their grass isn't even a God made green color once they "edit" the pictures. Then there are those people, like my father-in-law, that saw how good my pictures were and bought my exact camera and all of a sudden he was a photographer. I feel sorry for the wedding he did and all the blurry pictures. What he doesn't realize is, I took classes in Photography when I was in college, it just wasn't my major. And to get those "great ones" it takes a ton of bad ones. And the grammar thing, yeah, BIG pet peeve of mine! My mom was raised by an English teacher, and it has been drilled in my head since birth. I tend to correct my husband and daughter out of habit from my parents.

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  3. This is my husband's pet peeve as well. He's always telling me about how much he hates when people claim to be photographers because they can use a vignette on Instagram. My husband isn't a photographer by trade but studies photography and really has an eye for a great photo. I, on the other hand, truly dislike when people mess up grammar/spelling that should be obvious and second nature.

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  4. Agreed...this is everywhere...seems like anytime anybody buys a nice camera, it changes them, forgetting the fact that it takes practice, and a special eye to do this type of thing...drives me nutso!

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  5. I don't think the "fauxtographers" is just in the military wive's community...I see it everywhere! Especcially when I was back in high school. The one girl who's parents bought her an absurdly expensive camera was suddenly getting requests to do everyone's pictures for events...and her pictures always turned out horrible!

    I also agree with the whole grammar thing. Someone emailed me about a business proposition and spelled every other word wrong. That's not professional at all.
    --Becky
    preppypremed.blogspot.com

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  6. ... How about instead of doing something they're not good at, they can make themselves useful and get a real job. I'm a military wife and I am not apposed to working a normal job with normal hours that require me to get off my ass do REALLY work.

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