Guys, sometimes I just feel like I’m being Punk’d. This is not a portrait. This is very bad. And I mean it with the nicest of sincerity. It’s just not a portrait. If you are the maker, and you submitted this, and you really want feedback, I’m going to give you feedback, okay?

You’ve got a choice to make. You always have to ask yourself, the space that’s being left when we leave some negative space, some head room, is it helping or hurting the image? And you know, when photographers get together and they start critiquing stuff like this, if it’s not helping, the argument is always made that it’s hurting, right?

A for effort here. I see what you’re trying to do, but this is poorly executed. You’re trying to drop the kids in, all to the same scene, looking the same way, and clearly our little child on the far right, who is not listening to what’s going on, is more than likely the problem child.

I feel the image is lacking expression, emotion, connection. Sometimes, as we’re doing critiques, we’re looking at the obvious. We’re looking at lighting, we’re looking at posing. Here, I’m just struggling with the connection of our subject. Maybe that’s the goal, but these are things you want to be looking at.