vic_. Posted December 16, 2002 Share Posted December 16, 2002 "People ask for criticism, but they only want praise." -- W. Somerset Maugham There have been some critics (good photographers with extensive portfolios on this forum) who were hounded into silence because some perceived their bluntness to be an extreme form of rudeness. This is possibly due to differences in grammatical style of different nationalities. Or possibly due to fragile egos. After all, one would surely know that $5,000 worth of Leica guarantees that any "image" penetrating the lens body combination will qualify as high art. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobflores Posted December 16, 2002 Share Posted December 16, 2002 TREVOR - You could have probably scored a cool $100K at last weeks Modern Art Sale in Florida with that one... Who can say. I still say that good or even "GREAT" photography, may or may not be art. It may just be a terrific representation of the the mood, surroundings, circumstances surrounding the subject at that moment in time. Take for example the photos in National Geographic. Ostensibly some of the best photos around today ( okay, the Magnum folks too ). But I personally cannot imagine taking your typical, or even exeptional Nat Geo Photo, blowing it up, framing it and hanging it on my wall. That's just not their purpose. So, I maybe tonight I'll take a good, hard look at my toenails and start shooting. Who knows? I may just become the next hot thing in art photography ;-) I say, shoot what makes you happy and DAMN the CRITICS! b~ 8-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larry_kincaid1 Posted December 16, 2002 Share Posted December 16, 2002 Frankly, I think that many of the comments on this subject apply to the winning photographs of contests that I have seen in magazines or on the web. Many, of course, may make take your breath away for a moment, but there are many others for which you wonder why they got there at all. "Ordinary," "unremarkable," etc. Those are the ones where you say, "Several of mine are better than that!" These are the ones that encourage you to keep trying; the spectacular ones make you wonder why you bother at all. There may be three categories: 1) "Wow," with almost total consensus, 2) "Aghh," take it away with almost total consensus, and then 3) almost total disagreement, neither good nor bad, and everyone seems to use different criteria. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
travis1 Posted December 17, 2002 Share Posted December 17, 2002 Joseph, just wondering. Are you more pissed with bad photos or with dishonest (politically correct, polite) critiques to those photos? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
travis1 Posted December 17, 2002 Share Posted December 17, 2002 It puzzles me. If the photo pisses you off, then don't look at it. If the comments seemed dishonest to you, then don't trust it. Most of us, fortunately, have brains to decide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hoyin_lee1 Posted December 17, 2002 Share Posted December 17, 2002 Praise the good ones, encourage the promising ones and ignore the bad and banal ones. This way, nobody's feeling should get hurt and everyone should get the message. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joseph_barbano Posted December 17, 2002 Author Share Posted December 17, 2002 "Pissed-off" is not the operative verb. I am not pissed-off with either the quality of the photos or the political correctness. Rather, some photos are good and some not. The criticism of the photos on this site is not consistent, thoughtful (knowledgeable), and constructive. Some, if not many, of the criticisms do not identify for both good and bad pictures, why a photo succeeds or why it fails. I'm not sure if it's politeness or inexperience. After posting this thread yesterday, my observations are: (1) there is a significant number of photographers who visit this site which feel the same as I do about this subject, (2) there are also a large number of photographers who feel that they will dash the spirits of aspiring photographers by being critical (and I don't mean telling them their work "sucks"), and, finally, a number of reponses to this thread seemed indignant and were sarcastic to the entire concept of critical evaluation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
travis1 Posted December 17, 2002 Share Posted December 17, 2002 YEA, looks like Joseph wants most of us to go back to basic photography class or a least learn how to properly critique before we can ever post here? Let it go pal..when was the last time you ever gave a critique here anyway? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Rowlett Posted December 17, 2002 Share Posted December 17, 2002 I agree that a dishonest yet polite critique does a disservice to the photographer, but an honest critique that is impolite is much worse and usually any positive "critique" virtues go unnoticed due to the impoliteness. <p> Critiquing photography is just as much an art form as photography itself. (Where o' where is that one post that made reference to an honest and polite critique made by Ansel Adams... it was posted on photo.net a few years ago, and it is a great example of hot wo critique.) <p> Proper photographic critiques are <b>always polite</b> (even when they need to be negative), and they <b>never</b> contain useless and crude words such as "suck" or "pissed." Being Leica enthusiasts, we can converse better than that. I don't care if we are looked upon as stuck up or elitist (we may even be so), but I do very much care that we're looked on (from out, and from in) as being polite with each other. Backups? We don’t need no stinking ba #.’ _ , J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spearhead Posted December 17, 2002 Share Posted December 17, 2002 <i>great example of hot wo critique</i><p> Tibetan? Nepalese? Mongolian? Tony, I'm at a loss for which language you are using.<p> I think not saying anything about a photograph that misses isn't helping the photographer at all. Music and Portraits Blog: Life in Portugal Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
todd frederick Posted December 17, 2002 Share Posted December 17, 2002 Your question is much larger than any of us can discuss or resolve on this forum. Every one of us takes photos (or paints, or make quilts, or rebuilds classic cars) for deeply personal reasons. The bottom line is this (and you can't escape this truth!)...Nothing is permanent! All things will disintegrate and decay. So, the moment is NOW. If someone takes what you consider to be a shitty photo...so what. It's a masterpiece to that photographer. There are no standards of "perfection." There are not "rules." What works for you, works...right now...you, your vision, your camera, and the present moment. The photograph is only a "reminder" of what you saw, what you experienced, and what was important to you at that moment in time...not good; not bad; no duality. Your photo is your photo...that's all. No photosgraph has any value in and of itself other than the photographer's personal experience of that moment in time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymond_tai Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 The Leica forum is part of Photo.net now so why not just use the Photo Critique section for such posts? Whether or not a photo was taken with a Leica is totally irrelevant except to the photographer. Of course if someone posts a photo just because it was taken with a Nocticron then it would be OK :{} Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nesrani Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 "So, the moment is NOW. If someone takes what you consider to be a shitty photo...so what. It's a masterpiece to that photographer. There are no standards of "perfection." There are not "rules." What works for you, works...right now...you, your vision, your camera, and the present moment. The photograph is only a "reminder" of what you saw, what you experienced, and what was important to you at that moment in time...not good; not bad; no duality. Your photo is your photo...that's all. No photograph has any value in and of itself other than the photographer's personal experience of that moment in time." ----------- I couldn't disagree more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joseph_barbano Posted December 18, 2002 Author Share Posted December 18, 2002 I refuse to enter into a diatribe with respondents on this website regarding this topic. Unfortunately, there are apparently a number of respondents to this site who are extraordinarily sensitive about this topic or their photographic capabilities and because of this, the overall standard for photographic evaluation is tempored at the expense of useful and constructive feedback. If one's work were critiqued by a very knowledgeable and experienced critic (such as an editor from National Geo, the New Yorker, American Photo, or from Magnum), the overwhelming majority of comments about the photos would center around very basic issues such as composition, lighting, exposure, subject, balance, focus point, etc. These are basic issues in photographic endeavor. In fact, most photos fail because of problems with these basic issues and not due appreciating some subjective esoteric insight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Rowlett Posted December 18, 2002 Share Posted December 18, 2002 Oops, my mistake. I mean to say: "and it is a great example of how to critique." I transposed a few letters there. Backups? We don’t need no stinking ba #.’ _ , J Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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