[Pavel]

I am surprised that there are so few recent posts in the critiques section. What do you think the reasons are? Pavel

[Keith Alan]

Maybe nobody has anything they want critiqued right now?

That section always goes through dry spells, and that's just the way this forum is.

[wulinka]

to be honest I never pay too much attention to where a picture is posted.
When I get here, I look at all "new posts since last visit" and often shots get critique anyway, even if they are posted
somewhere else.
The reason is certainly not that we bite people who post in the critique forum,
You can go ahead an post there!

greetings! Uli

[Don Schaeffer]

We get enough criticism in the showcase forum. I don't like putting my photos especially under the gun where people feel obligated to find fault.

[Pavel]

I agree Don, that if you do not wish to have your photos reviewed, you do not post on the critique part of the site. I am less advanced a photographer than you are and I feel I benefit both from reviewing and being reviewed. When I do my review, I do not feel obligated to find faults. I try to communicate how I feel when I look at the photo and I try to describe what I see as the strengths and weakneses of the reviewed image. I also try to offer suggestions of how to address any perceived weakneses if I can. As a reviewer, I see myself more as a second pair of eyes, rather than a judge in a competition. The feedback I got here was always curteous and kind and helpful. However, I miss opportunity to review more photos and it would be nice to have more people comment back as well.

I appreciate that you are telling me the reason why you do not post on the critique part of the site. Fortunatelly this site has the "showcase" part, where the posted photos are not intended for review and this gives us a choice. I will always welcome any comments from you on my photos though, positive or negative. I learn from both . Thanks Pavel

[Pavel]

Hello Ulinka,

I think that it is nice that this site does distinguish between "critique" part and a "showcase" part. If I see that the photo is posted in the showcase part, I will not post review comments. If it is posted in the critique site, I interpret that as a request for a review. Pavel

[wulinka]

....mea culpa

Greetings, Uli

[Zig]

I reckon anyone who posts, does so with a right and responsibility: a "right" to expose their work to others for free, yet a responsibility to allow their work to be commented on. Yes, it requires trust, yet most here are highly respectful. Maybe if one wishes to "opt out" they could always add a comment to that effect with their pic?
Just my tuppenceworth.

[matthew]

I've been following this thread without the time to make my own comment, and like the way the discussion is going.

The best critique is to explain what you see. We all know that photography is subjective, and the unspoken part of that is the experience that the viewer brings to the photograph, which may be very different from the photographer's expectations. That's true for both technical insights as well as more personal and aesthetic reactions. There's no inherent need for a critical - thinking - look at a photograph to be negative in tone, intent, or content.

It's a pretty amazing thing to think that I can communicate my experience of the photograph back to the photographer.

But that said, I rarely post photos anywhere but in the assignments, and almost never in the critique forum. When I do post a photo and seek feedback on it, it's usually as a 'reality check' to see what other people think of the direction that I've headed in, and I'm not looking for technical advice or composition suggestions. Most of my favourite images do not play well with others, but I occasionally need and value the opinions of people who know me and my work to tell me if what I'm doing makes any sense at all.

[Pavel]

Zig, I agree with you about the right, responsibility and trust. I am at a different (lower) stage of photographic development and my nature, my family, my education and most of my friends reinforced in me to think as a scientist. It is a usefull way of thinking for dealing with some problems and I am not knocking it. It is a real handicap when it comes to art and photography. The good part is that you pick up the technical stuff relatively easily. The handicap is that you travel "blind". You do not see, you are overly focused and excessively goal oriented. Look at the revealing discussions about where we are with regards to photography. Most of you are open to wide variety of sights and experiences, yet I seem to travel the narrow and blind path towards a goal. For me having a dialogue with you is valuable, as I hope through that I can learn to put some of my native thinking aside and use some of yours. I have been a snapshooter, but I feel I am making the first tentative steps towards being a photographer. I would guess that upon inspection, hearing opinion of others, even less experineced and gifted photographers like me can benefit you all in some way that you may not see until it happens and so discussion I beleive is beneficial to all of us.

Mathew, this is where my response to you comes in. I do not think that bashing anybody is constructive and so I agree with you that review comments hould not be negative in tone or intent. Such discourse is not helpful and I did not come across it on this site. I am not sure that I agree with you about not accepting negative content. Perhaps you intended that statement differently than I interpret it. I think that in order for me (and perhaps us) to learn, it is useful as you say to hear how the photo makes you feel (did I understand correctly?) and to hear what is right with my photo. However, I also find it instructive to be told what in the view of the reviewer works less well. This opinion may be right or wrong, but serves as a flag for me to consider and to make me think about it. At the end I may accept the suggestion from a reviewer or not, but either way I am a winner, because I gave a thought to an issue which I did not think about before or I revisit an issue which I may have thought about, but from a different angle. I think a reviewer benefits greatly too. From my own experience, I can say that I learned a lot thinking through why some photos work for me and others do not or how to make a given photo work better for me. I learned from doing this and I think it is an amazingly effective learning tool. I do not know if it would at your level, but I think I learned a lot reviewing photos of people with even less experience than I do.

Thank you both Zig and Mathew for commenting. It is useful for me to understand your views. Pavel

[matthew]

Hi Pavel;

I think I oversimplified a touch too much, and we do agree -- there's never a need for a critique to be negative in tone or intent, as in 'intended to make the other person feel worse about themselves' negative. There's no inherent need for a critique to be negative in content either, in the sense that it's possible to write a critique without disliking a single thing about the image or providing any suggestions or changes. Put another way, it's not a matter of point/counterpoint or a quest to find a fault in an image, which is something that some people dislike about writing a critique.

And there's always plenty to learn; I'm not on any different level. But recently I've been concentrating more on creating series and essays, which aren't really candidates for individual critique and end up in the Photo Stories forum here, or I shoot for the assignments. (That's being generous, I hardly ever shoot just for fun any more.) It's also true that I'm not a big fan of viewing photos on-line: the quality is mediocre, the size is too small, and the colour and luminance reproduction is unreliable. Instead I'll get together with a few photographers from my club for occasional photo evaluations, and after getting used to seeing images full-screen on a calibrated 24" monitor it's hard to go back. And now that I'm building a printed portfolio the effect of an electronic image on the screen, no matter what size it is, isn't the end-product that I'm looking for feedback on.

[bagman]

Hi y'all I am a newbie here and came across this section...what I want to show is not for critique but more a query and plea for advice!!
I have uploaded a photo I want to use on my website but I am doing something wrong as they all come out grey/gray.

I am using just a cheap little acer CI-6330 set on P for point and shoot. I have tried adjusting the white balance to both tungsten and flourescent as I shoot in the dark for consistency { the daylight here in the UK cant be relied on to be good at any time!} I have also adjusted the exposure but that doesnt work either........HELP PLEASE I am going nuts trying to sort this.

PS hope I am in the right place for this

[matthew]

Hi Bagman, and welcome to shuttertalk.

For a new subject it's best to start a new thread, but this is a fairly straightforward question: you need to find the 'exposure compensation' button on the back of your camera. It will look like a +/- symbol. Pressing this button and then using the left and right arrows will make the photo brighter or darker, in this case you need to move it to +1 to +1.7. Cameras will try to make a photo look grey, so this is how you tell it when you need it to be brighter or darker than average.

[Pavel]

They don't pay you for nothing at Adorama Mathew! very nice, precise response. Pavel

[bagman]

Thanx for that I will try it tonite and let you know how I get on

NIgel

[Zig]

Or, get a grey card, meter from that, lock or set to manual; might be a touch more precise

[bagman]

I am going to try both the exposure compensation and the manual way tonight...thanx for the tips!
I think you will see better what a mess my photos are on my site @

www.razamatzjewellery.co.uk.

also any other tips on how to imrove the photos would be appreciated

Nigel

[mranshumansinha]

please guide me to the critique section
under forum section we only find the show case thing
and may be thats one reason that you know.....
people do not find it easily where is the critique section...and not posting there!!!
is the general talk ....a critique forum
why does not the admin makes it simpler?
....thanks
anshuman

[Pavel]

Hello Anshuman, here is the link to the Critique section. http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/viewforum.php?id=47. In general you can access it by going to Forum (blue menue on top) look for "showcase" group of forums. One of them is "critique" forum. If you wish to have your photos critiqued, post from that forum. If you post in other parts of the forum, we assume that you are not looking for a critique. At present, the critique forum is not that busy. Very few people post, but a few people (always the same small bunch) provide very good reviews, except that they are so nice about it, that it is difficult to figure out sometimes when they do not like something. I hope that I will see you post and provide reviews. If you did, the number of reviewers would go up by about 10% to 20% and the number of people regularly posting there by perhaps as much as 30% (OK guys, may be less).

It is possible, that future may bring chanages to the site, which would make it easier to find the critique site. So hold on and hope. Pavel