Bad Photography: How Not To Take Pictures
Dennis' Lair

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This particular gallery is pretty much the outtakes folder. It more or less constitutes a brief lesson in how one should not take somebody's picture.

I will openly confess that these are photos that, for the most part, are pretty much bloopers that are worth archiving for this purpose. In the first case, however, this was more or less intentional to demonstrate something of a blunder I frequently see at many a convention, ren faire, et cetera.

All considered, most of these photos - as they accumulate - should be pretty self explanatory.

For all intents and purposes, I have a few good guidelines that I use whenever I'm on a shoot

DO

• Always ask permission of your subject, and don't be afraid to interact with them a little bit
• Frame well. Get the entire body. Optimally, you want to do "portrait" orientation for one or two subjects; if you get more, go to "landscape".
• Have the subject do whatever they feel, but try and get them to smile naturally.
• Always ask permission to post on the internet, if that's your aim.
• If you do this, get their contact information or find a way to let them know where you are putting the photos. Easiest is to have a stack of business cards with your website on them.
• Be aware of your backgrounds
• Be aware of your camera, its functions, and its capabilities (it's a great way sometimes to get some accidentally killer shots!)
• Focus
• Use the camera to the best of its capabilities; even with a cheap 2 MP camera with a CMOS whose film speed equivalent is ISO 100, you can still turn out some good shots if you do it right

DON'T

• Shoot if they say no
• Try and convince a subject that they want to be in the shot
• Just shoot someone
• Get the restrooms or port-a-potties in the background; everybody poops, but it breaks the illusion
• Get a shot of them if they are doing something that people abhor, such as picking their nose, or smoking
• Ask at a bad time, such as while they're eating
• Forget to turn on the flash
• Shoot a stilt dancer
• Blame the camera, ever; it doesn't matter if you spend a million dollars on the highest megapixel count, the most features, or the one with the kitchen sink attached, if you take a bad shot, you take a bad shot, you get over it

And with that, here are the outtakes.

	This shot is intentional for purpose of demonstration - and our subject was very, VERY gracious in doing this. I only wish I could remember her name. While this is an otherwise good costume, there are several problems with the photograph. For starters, the subject's arms are pulled all the way in. So you can see she's wearing harem pants on the lower half of her body, but you can't do much with the upper part. Second, there's the nose and cigarette. She's supposed to be dressed as a fairy, and while it's undeniable that you'll get smoking fairies, this breaks the illusion of the costume. Third, there's the Biffies in the background. 'Nuff said. The moral of this story is simple: don't do this.
	This is a true blooper on my part. This one would otherwise have been a great shot, except for the fact that it was too dark to work without a flash, resulting in a very dark photograph. Side effects are those artifacts inthe lower left of the shot, an awkward facial expression, and not really being in focus all that well.
	This one's simple; I moved at the wrong time. Oops!
	Eyes are shut here. It happens and it can be hard to control. One trick is to offer to count to three - and then shoot at 1.
	Autofocus doesn't always work. It's damn good and better than it was originally, but it doesn't always work.
	On this one, there's a huge lens flare and the subject - the violinist in the middle - is just setting up.
	I have no idea what the camera focused on here, but it's possible that I defocused at the wrong time.