I debated doing that as a business! Single super bebo shot €50... 

Good on you Alicia! I guess the argument, everyone has to start somewhere COULD, in effect, be argued. But it's people who don't admit that they are novices in the industry, that don't look for work to expand their portfolio that just wreck my nerves. I have a shoot with a tog this Saturday who did photography before and only did landscapes. Now he's looking to move into models, but for the commercial side so I said I would help him out! He admitted he wasn't particularly skilled and is giving up time to fix this. Why can't others?

On the model side, people get really offended if you give criticism, whether it's to beginners or professionals. This is the age old discussion on here, but I wanted to put forth an example, again related to the 'Bebo Nation'.

A good friend of mine moved to Australia about 2 years ago, and she now works in a studio. She hasn't ever taken an interest in the modelling side, she's more interested in behind the camera. One day her and the professional photographer got a new backdrop and a couch and decided to try out which lighting worked best etc, and instead of doing it with professional models coming in and, i suppose wasting their time, they tried with her. She uploaded some of the photos, and they did look really good, they had a 1950's feel about it, looked really well. BUT it was ruined by a frame put around it like something out of paint, the jagged ones that then leave white around where it cuts off. So I voiced my opinion, told her it took away the classiness of the shot. Another friend came on and stuck the digs in telling her how she was far better than people who had been doing this for a while ;) I took this as a wee dig towards me. But left it at that.

It could all be for people's self confidence, they put up these photos of them lying half naked on their camera phone because they know it'll a) boost their views (and their egos) and b) give them lots of attention and praise. Bring them down off their high horse and you get nothing but abuse. I would rather take honest opinions rather than all good.

Cx

I actually had a 'photographer' mail me recently on Bebo 'just letting me know' that he offered good rates on model portfolios. Sounds nice of him and all but you should have seen what this guy called his 'previous work', they were all blurry, low-lit pics of just turned 18s with too much make-up on that had been taken in what looked like a dirty bedsit. Considering that i have the best bits of my existing portfolio on display on my Bebo site I was quite offended by this!

I didn't react though- i simply replied with a message saying that if he ever needed a professional model to work work then my rates were reasonable too

The sad thing about it all is.. There's loads of 'photographers' floating about on sites like Bebo and MySpace and to make matters worse I always see young girls leaving public messages on their pages saying how fab their work is and how they'd love to work with them one day. Why they want to work with people who produce such crap quality of work is beyond me!

Alicia

In my opinion, you can spot the difference between a good photographer and a bad one by their attitude to digital imaging. A bad photographer has no hesitation in saying "I'll fix that later in Photoshp" whereas a good photographer will use all their skill and experience to get the image as near perfect as they can in the camera and then use Photoshop to apply any enhancements.

You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear! Yet there are countless examples of this approach here and elsewhere. I've also found that a significant amount of people come to expect that a photographer does some "enhancement" work on their images. Even fellow photographers do this. Not too long ago I posted a series of images on here which looked fine pretty much as they were, but led to a comment that my images were too much like another photographer's image. So I ran a few more of them through various Photoshop processes to make them a little different and suddenly, hey presto, I was deemed to have put my own stamp on them and they were better images because of it! Anybody that hasn't leaned the craft of photography the way we had to when film was the only option, really hasn't taken the time to understand the in's and out's of photography, in my opinion.

Stop this "Fix it in Photoshop" Nonsense is a great article on this very topic that should be required reading for anyone that has ever thought "I'll fix it later."

So far, the discussion has been almost entiterly photographer focused, but models, or rather "wannabe models" must carry their share of responsibility too. Why do they insist on working with sub-standard photographers over and over again? If they really want their modelling to mean something, can't they see that the best way to do this is by using quality images in their portfolios? Why are they so keen to fill their profile pages with shot after shot from a mobile phone with one image being pretty much the same as the next? Have they no pride in the work they produce? Once they put it on the internet, there's no taking it back. Sure, they can take it off again, but there's no telling how many people have downloaded the image already. When it comes to model portfolios, less is more. A portfolio full of 30 so-so images is going to have much less impact than one with 3 WOW images.

I realise that for many, myself included, this is just a hobby. But surely, that's no excuse for not striving to give it your best effort?

- Thorsten.

‘’Do we all make it look too easy, do we cover up the hard work behind it? Is this why there are so many  that start off with the best visions in mind and then flake off when they realise it doesn't come along too easily?’’

Spot on statement, Sometimes I wish I had not picked it up 2 years ago.lol as this is such a vast field and requires lots of dedication, I spend hours & hours every week learning and reading on the subject and spending a few hours a week shooting to get myself to some sort of reasonable standard, I have spent more money on courses DVDs books etc than I have on my camera. After these few years I would still class myself as average/below average .lol, And it does peeve me that the are some buying a DSLR sticking it on auto and way you go I am a photographer, and here is me spending hours and hours on learning the art, Maybe I am just a very slow learner and you can pick up the hole subject within weeks or months!   

As Thorsten said I think this is more a reflection on modern society, and I hope de do not get to a stage for we losing the art altogether with the thought in the digital age the computer will sort that out for me!

Martin

It's worse than that Cathy, and you don't need to go snooping on Bebo to find examples as there are more than enough of them here! There are plenty of guys (yes, it's usually guys) that think they can pick up a camera and use it as an excuse to see girls in various states of undress. There are enough of these guys willing to pay money to so called 'models' to give these girls the impression that they can actually make some money out of this and suddenly they are a model and expect a fee from every one that want to shoot with them, even though there are no images of any merit in their collection of images (it's hardly worth calling it a portfolio).

As to what makes a picture stand out from the mass of Bebo-style images, it's difficult to quantify in one way as photography is such a subjective things and everybody has their own opinion on it. There are some 'photographers' here that will have you believe their work is high-art even if it might be the worst image on here.

What makes an image stand out for me is if it's clear that the model and photographer have put some effort into the image. It's properly exposed, the composition is good, the colour balance is correct and so on - all the technical elements should be right, there's no excuse for sloppiness on that front. But a good image is more than just technical excellence and indeed technical flaws may often be forgiven if the image works leaving the viewer saying "Wow!"

I realise your post touches a whole lot of other aspects apart from just the sheer photographic elements, but it would probably take an essay to discuss all of them. Suffice it to say that the culture and society we live in today shapes the type of people we become (although, it could equally be argued that the type of people we are shapes the society we live in!).

Not to be too flippant about it, but I'm sure this would make for an interesting research subject for someone studying the relevant topics at uni!

- Thorsten.