Being a professional photographer I visit other blogs and forums related to the profession and today I visited a professional forum where a photographer was asking for a critique, I saw the photos and was planning on offering several suggestions on some very obvious problems with the photos.

To my shock and horror all the comments before mine were beautiful, wonderful, great work and sadly these were coming from photographers who should have known better.  At that point I knew there was more wrong with the industry than my comments would have addressed so I simply said nothing, a much better alternative than sounding like a grump.

Granted she was a very beautiful model, granted the exposure was correct, and she has probably never taken a bad photo in her life.  Professional photographers are suppose to look beyond that yes she is beautiful but how do I show her strengths and diminish her weaknesses, how do I in other words make her seem even more beautiful.

Basic rules of composition, posing to add dimension and movement, lighting the express the mood, and add dimension, posing that flatters her body.  The reason for a professional photographer is to make a model look even better than she does already.

Maybe the other photographers who commented were just being kind or frighteningly they may have actually never noticed the obvious.  Either way there is a photographer out there who thinks she is doing great because everyone told her she was.

Praise in public, correct in private, I will probably send a private email with my suggestions and offer them as mere possibilities that she may wish to try next time, along with a YouTube suggestion or two on posing, lighting, and why they are important.

I can begin to appreciate even more now what Monte Zucker was trying to do and he was fighting the good fight until the end.