How To Use Criticism To Improve Your Photography

Photography criticism is a complex arena of thought. Whether a person enjoys a photo or not is emotionally based opinion in most cases and the audience that is looking at the photo is important. Placing an image on the Internet makes it available to many, but only a few may see it and it is difficult to know even who that audience is. There are some general ways to draw information from the criticism(good and bad) That can help a photographer improve.

Family And Friends

Your family and friends generally will not tell you if a photo is bad. It's far to easy just to compliment you and avoid the risk of harming a relationship over a simple photo. If they are a photographer too, they may offer some criticism, but it's still really tough.

One indicator that you've done well is when they ask for a copy of the photo, especially if it involves them paying for it. If they're willing to part with money, even a small amount, that at least shows interest in the photo. That interest may only be of a personal level though and may only indicate that the subject alone is the reason for their interest. Even so, the subject is the most important part of the photo.

Photography Teachers And Other Professionals

Criticism from photography professionals can be some of the best or worst that that you'll get. It depends on the person and their agenda. There is no possible way to teach without criticizing a student, but that criticism should only be constructive. By constructive, I mean that the student needs to be told what they could do differently to achieve better results.

Constructive criticism from professionals is rare because it takes their time and effort. Professionals do photography to earn a living and many don't make much money doing it. Unless their earning money from giving lessons, telling you how to do their job isn't going to pay the rent. If they're giving you constructive criticism, value it because something sparked their interest enough to make mention of your work.

Photography Forums

This is possibly the worst place to get criticism in my opinion. Anyone who's found their way to a the forum you're on was probably much like you and looking for answers to photography questions. They were looking to share their work and learn from others. Photography forums are the path of least resistance to that. 

People get addicted to the conversations and feel the need to give their input on everything, whether they know about it or not. I've seen very involved posts of someones opinion of a camera and they never even held that model of camera. I've seen photos that I thought were very good get scathing non-constructive criticism from a forum member, only to notice later that there it was nothing more than was revenge for a negative comment.

Most forums are free or cheap and worth every cent. 

Flickr And Other Sharing Sites

Flickr and other photo sharing sights offer an interesting perspective. It's not just photographers that go there like a photography forum. All types of visitors visit. The attitude is much more relaxed as visitors scroll through an endless stream of photos. If they land on yours and take the time to even like it, you know that at least you created a photo that grabbed their attention in some way. 

A Flickr success doesn't mean that the photo is a great photo, it simply means that attention was grabbed. People tend to like photos that they have a connection too. A poor quality photo here that reminds many people of something the like or experienced will do very well. It may have been "starred" for that reason alone.

My mindset is that photography is about sharing your vision of a split second in time. If Flickr helped you do that and the photo was grabbing enough to make it happen many times on that platform, it means you had at least a good concept. It may also mean that the photo had the right keywords and followed all of the platform's rules to get noticed frequently so consider this and don't get discouraged unless your view count is very high, but there is little action taking place with the photo. If that is the case, try some new ideas to see if the situation changes. 

Your Own Blog

Starting your own website or blog can be a good indicator of how good your photos are, but only after the technical aspects are mastered. It takes time to get the website ranked and there is quite a bit to learn about how to do that.

If you can manage to follow the directions at one of the free sites, like Tumblr or Blogger, it's easy to get started. This allows you to interact at many different levels. The website should be referenced wherever possible. On forums and social media, drop a link whenever it makes sense to do so.

The information gathered from the website will tell where interests are when they find the site, how long they stay on the site, and how they find your photos. If you're trying to gauge your photos by this type of information, a website is the way to go.

I've always thought the ultimate compliment one can give a photo is to buy it. Nothing says, "I like your work.", like a customer willing to put down their hard earned money for it. If e-commerce on your website just isn't your thing, give them away with a Creative Commons license. I've known a few photographers that have become well known just because of their generous licensing found on their website.

Art Exhibits

I wish I had experience with an art exhibit, but I don't. This is one on my bucket list. In order to sell photos at an art exhibit, a photographer needs to invest his money and this means you need the confidence that you'll sell enough photos to recoup that money. There is usually an entry fee and the photos need to be mounted and framed. I think this is the best goal for testing your own self-confidence and selling photos at an art exhibit would put you in a competitive sales situation with other photographers of the same confidence level.

Use Criticism Wisely And Enjoy Photography No Matter What

Learning to use criticism to improve your photography should improve your photos, not discourage your photography endeavors. Pick the most constructive criticism and continue taking and sharing photos no matter what your critics say. Some truly are out to discourage you!

Professional photographers have the edge in that they have to continue no matter what critics say. An amateur should have the same mindset. Those who do well in any endeavor tend to do it just because they love it and feel the need to practice their art no matter what. 

Practice, Practice, And Practice More

Photography is not much different from any other art form in that practice makes perfect. In order to practice, you not only need to always have your camera on you, but you need to be using it. The more complex the camera, the more that it should be on your person if a photographer wishes to master their craft and their equipment.

The path to perfection in photography is practice.

It may seem crazy to have an expensive camera capable of great photos laying on the shelf at home, but even during those times when a cell phone camera is all that you own, you're still practicing. The mere practice of framing the shot is still useful in terms of training your mind to think about photos in the world around you and even how you act when taking photos.

I'm not a fan of the 365 photo projects as I rarely see great photographs come from them. These projects are where a photographer posts at least one photograph a day for a year. Very few of these turn out well. Consider that many pros fail to produce 1 great photo per day. With that in mind, an amateur probably isn't going to either. It is easy to become discouraged with the project and it's a setup for failure. In my opinion, changing the project to taking photos everyday, editing photos once a week, and posting 1 good photo a month out(or something to that effect) is a better way to get into the practice of always practicing.

Consider how other arts are perfected. It's common to take a class, practice with the exercises given, and work up accordingly. Photography can be learned in the same way. Start with some simple basics like learning the settings, then move to applying to them to compositions that follow the rules(or styles if you will), etc. Keep improving and adding skills as they are perfected. Small projects that work towards perfecting a skill are good too.

Pick a project that sounds like something that's not  a setup for failure. It should sound like more of a pleasure to do rather than a chore. Whatever it is, make sure it's a project that is good enough to hold your interest.

Let Photos Cook To Ease The Editing Process

I've heard the tip more than a few times that it's good to let photos cook a while. What this means is that it's good wait a while before downloading images to your computer and editing them. The reason for this is that when the photo was taken, the photographer was there and enjoying the moment. All of that sensory input from being there is fresh in the mind when the photo is soon viewed to soon. It's harder to judge a photo as poor with the pleasant memory of the photo adding to the judgement.

For family snapshots and things of this nature, the rule generally doesn't apply. Those photos are keepers just for the memory of the people involved. You'll be going back to those photos and deleting the poor versions anyhow. 

As I've talked about before in the editing process of photos, bad photos are a liability. Even deleting them detracts from the time you could be processing good photos. If you remove the emotional baggage that comes with having the scene fresh in your experience, deleting the photos is just a much quicker decision.

This street photo sat in my camera for a long time, but jumped out as one of about a hundred on the card that I liked. 

As an amateur, the luxury of taking your time for selecting the best of your photos is benefit. Professionals in many areas of photography are in a push for time and you'll find their opinion of this method to be that it's unacceptable. Professional photographers in artistic fields tend to prefer this method. Even street photographers that minimize all image editing, even cropping, like this method when they have the time for it. 

Large capacity memory cards help with letting the photos cook. Today's memory cards are so large that it allows for many shoots on one card. One card can be in the camera while another is in the computer with files awaiting download and editing. It's a simple system. 

Photography Can Be A Blend Of Art And Communication

To enjoy photography more, learning the many facets to it's utility as a powerful form of communication is a wise activity. At photography's most basic level, you're capturing light available bouncing off of subjects and placing it on a medium such as film or digital storage. That's all it is until a photographer puts their own personal touch to the capture.

As a photographer, you can edit the medium to suit your purposes. So what do you want to do with it? Professionals have to follow paths that generate income. They specialize and form images that will encourage others to buy their work. They've put effort into finding out what they can produce that people will buy. If they're to survive, it's their business first and their passion second. There are even some professional photographers that would enjoy nothing more than never seeing a camera again, but they have to make a living and it's their chosen profession. As an amateur, you're open to take that medium and create anything you'd like. 

As an amateur photographer, I choose no specialty whatsoever. I take photos of what I find interesting. Wherever my shoes take me, I look for shots of interest. I have my camera at the ready as much as possible. Here's one of my wildlife shots, a smiling deer. I wasn't stalking the deer as a professional would have. I was simply hiking and this deer appeared with a smile. Very humorous and it's something that only a camera could communicate. If I told someone, "A deer stopped to smile at me while I was hiking.", they'd think I was crazy, but here's the photo to prove that I'm not. 

Deer smiling in the woods.

As an amateur photographer, you define your work by what you choose, not a customer. Do you consider yourself an artist? You can limit your work to only that which is beautiful in the artistic sense of photography.

Tractor Silhouette In A Sunset

Street photographer?

Man Walking On The Sidewalk With An Umbrella In The Sun

Or maybe a landscape photographer?

Shoreline At Marblehead State Park In Ohio.

All of these photos are my attempt to do one thing and that's communicate, regardless of the genre that they fit in. It's a really cool world that we live in when you start looking at it with a photographer's eye and that's something worth communicating.

A great deal can be learned from studying the professionals. They've invested their lives into their work and simply studying their photos can inspire you and lead to better photos. That's not where the world is headed with photography for the most part though is it? We're posting photos to communicate to others about what we're doing, what we enjoy, where beautiful places are, cool things that we've found, what we love and enjoy, and even things that shock and horrify us. The better a person can do that, the better they can communicate, and that leads to a more fulfilling life.