What's Wrong--1 Discussion

Yesterday I posted this picture. It was from my very first photo session. I asked a friend to let me practice on her family. I hung a white sheet from my ceiling in front of my sliding glass door and used natural light. I also used a point and shoot 1 MEGAPIXEL camera. I know! But that was back in the day....

As you can see, there are numerous problems with this photo. First of all, there was not enough light to turn the background white. In fact, you really need studio lights if you want a truly white background. There was also not enough distance between me and the subjects, so I ended up cutting off parts of their body that should have been in the frame. Because of the lack of light and the fact that my camera only had one megapixel, the whole image is grainy. There is also a blue color cast because I had no idea about white balance back then, and when you let the camera determine that for you, 90% of the time, it's going to be wrong. (I just came up with that percentage on my own. I once heard that Auto White Balance really stands for Auto Wrong Balance, and I totally believe it!)

So, don't take pictures like this! And especially don't take pictures like this and then charge money for them! (Luckily, I hardly charged anything when my work was crappy. So, you know, you get what you pay for!)