What do they mean?

[Plain Jane]

What does it mean when someone critiques your picture and says that it looks "too staged"? What is it that you have done wrong when this happens? Or a guess the better question is what should you be trying to capture? I'm just curious because I have seen it in other forums and wasn't sure what they meant by that.

Maybe this questionshould have gone in the newbie section. I feel like a screamingnewbie asking it.

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A picture that looks too staged means it looks like the people or the situation was obviously set up.

An example might be a man on a bicycle holding a flower looking up at his girlfriend on the balcony.

The shot might work, or it might look "too staged", trying to be natural when it's obvious it's not.

Now if the man were dressed in a clown costume and the woman was dressed like a madison avenue executive looking out the window of a corporate high rise, it might look staged but stylistically so. Then the shot works and we don't mind suspending our belief to get into the spirit of the shot.