Lighting, lighting, lighting. The same boring scene at noon can be fantastic at 5:00. Filters are also very useful: even with a phone, you can hold a filter (e.g. a circular polarizer) in front of your lens and sometimes get good results. The composition suggestions folks have given are also good, but you don’t necessarily need a complex, multilayer scene to create a good image - however, even a complex scene may not help you if the lighting is too poor.
Jokes are best unexplained. But if you must: saying that one’s images must be better because they were taken with better gear suggests a certain kind of gear-bro aesthetic that is well-known but not uniformly loved among photographers. And second, the bit about the body and the lens creates an unfortunate double entendre. The fact that both readings can be found in the same remark further amplifies the humor value. Thus, the comment.
TBH, the creepiest part is saying that of course they like your pictures because you have a mirrorless body and a nice lens…
“Gatekeeping” is a term that moochers employ to try to guilt others into letting them mooch. I am frankly surprised that anyone falls for it, but many kind-hearted folks seem vulnerable to this sort of bullying. Alas, bullies gonna bully, and moochers gonna mooch…
So many good comments here. One small thing to add is that the folks who reply may be giving you vague answers because the answers really are vague. Some of the things you want to achieve don’t have a simple or direct formula, and those who succeed do so in part by being attentive to and seizing on idiosyncratic opportunities. There is no way they can tell you how to replicate that, because not even they could replicate it. Not to say that there are not broad strategies (lots of experienced folks here have described some of them), but there is no simple and precise trick that will get you what you want. Most fields involving creativity or entrepreneurship are like that. Think of it like this: what if you pmed folks and asked them to tell you “how to make great art.” What if someone asked you that question? Probably, your answer would be vague. It would have to be, right? So it is with these kinds of career questions.
Can’t be bothered to evaluate your own photos. Also can’t be bothered to train s system to do it for you. Seems like you’re in a bit of a sad place.
At this point, even a 10 year old entry level camera is vastly better than what most folks used to shoot with, and more than adequate for most purposes. New tech is nice, but if you feel that you can’t be effective without it, you probably ought to go revisit your basic skills. Don’t get me wrong, I like gear as much as the next person, but I observe that a non-vanishing number of folks think that it substitutes for effective art or technique; you get folks with $1k+ cameras dumping them because their photos aren’t sharp. Those folks then run around telling newcomers that they need thousands of dollars in gear to even get started, which probably drives some folks away. Very annoying. Anyway, this is pretty ubiquitous, but you are probably more likely to hear it from a young person than someone who started on cheap film cameras and knows how far things have come.
Tell them that you will be happy to do it, but only shoot macro now. After a single round of dead skin photos, they won’t ask again. (For bonus points, alter the white balance to generate a true cadaver-like quality. If they complain, give wildly enthusiastic speeches about how this is true art, and how you are going to enter their nausea inducing images in various national and international photography contests. Tell them that you hope they will model again next year, since you have committed to a new series on bodily fluids. Relentless and unreasoning positivity combined with toxic performance is a truly unbeatable recipe for aggravating your target while leaving them no avenue for complaint. It’s awesome, provided that one is willing to appear somewhat unhinged.)
You can do it, but only if you are using a pinhole camera. It must be made using a Leica box, and the subject must include at least one can of cheese whiz - but it must be artfully composed. We look forward to your posts.
Great choice - cheap, but capable of great photography. The D5600 is also quite compact, and can probably be obtained cheaply. Lots of good DX F glass is out there, too. For someone just starting and who wants a light kit, the VR kit lens (I want to say 24-55mm?) might be a good way to go. Should be dirt cheap used, and the VR will help a lot for a new shooter on a body with no IBIS. Lots of room to expand from there.
I guess it’s refreshing to have a workman-blames-tools post where they blame newer hardware instead of older hardware. Usually, I see some variant of “I’m not Ansel Adams because my camera is a year old and only cost $10k, tell me which new one to buy.” This one has a more traditionalist aesthetic. (Obligatory fair shake comment: using an EVF effectively if you are used to SLRs does take a shift in thinking. I didn’t realize how much I had internalized about the peculiarities of the SLR viewfinder until I started working with a mirrorless system and wasn’t getting the results I expected. Not hard to adapt, though, once you realize the problem.)
I’m by no stretch an expert, but looking at some of her work I suspect that her “look” is coming from a whole combination of factors: lenses, filters, camera settings, choice of light and subjects, and composition. Setting aside the usual arguments for having one’s own style, I can see why you’d want to try to emulate her - very powerful stuff! But anyway, my point is that a lot of things are going into those photos, and I suspect that no amount of post-processing is going to get you that “look.” (Her composition and use of depth of field, for instance, seems really key to a lot of her shots. The ones I looked at also make very heavy use of atmospheric/environmental effects, and probably clever use of filters. She assuredly put a lot of work into shooting at just the right time and place to make those work out, probably with a lot of test runs and a lot of failures that we don’t see. She also had models/drivers/vehicles that were very well-chosen, which had to have involved a lot of work in and of itself.)
Since you are stuck, may I make a suggestion? I would suggest (1) going through samples of her oeuvre that you like, and (2) for each image, stopping and cataloging what you like about it. Break it down by subject, composition, lighting, perspective, etc., etc. (as much as you can). Try to figure out what she is accomplishing (that you would like to be able to accomplish), and as much as you can, what she did to accomplish it. (The “what” is for the most part not going to be post-processing, though it could involve that.) Try to be as granular as you can. After doing that, (3) compile all the examples into a master list, to see if there are some patterns (things you reliably admire about what she is doing, along with what you can determine about what may have gone into that). Then, (4) pick a few examples from your list, and think about how you could use them in your work. Now (5) go out and try to use those techniques. Assess (6) how it went, and adjust/discard/go back for more as needed.
This has some advantages. First, it will hopefully be fun, because it’s interesting to look at someone’s work and try to unpack what was cool about it and how the tricks might have been done. Second, it will focus you more broadly on useful techniques for making better art, and not narrowly on how to use Adobe products - that gives you a lot more ways to attain your goals. Third, it gives you a way to learn from her work, without trying to copy it: when you pick up tricks you will end up making them your own. That’s probably more satisfying in the long run, and anyway you aren’t going to beat a master at her own game! And fourth, you can extend it by applying it to other artists whose work you admire.
Probably more elaborate than you wanted, but perhaps useful to think about…
That could make it more interesting, by forcing them to work with different types of compositions than folks usually use…there can be virtue in mixing things up. But obviously some tradeoffs, as well.
Flickr, even now.