I agree. I think I've mentioned before about what I consider the difference between wanting a critique and wanting encouragement. A lot depends on your comfort level with your work and how you take feedback. Many people who ask for critiques really are looking for encouragement. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this and it's normal, especially when you don't think you have the firmest footing. But that's what I think the General form is for.
I think you are talking about something a little deeper than that though. Even those that really want a critique will tend to get a lot more out of a posting if they have an idea of what they want to get out of it. Instead of just posting an image and asking for people to post their impressions, you are probably more likely to get responses if you talk a bit about your own thoughts on the image. There's something to be said about looking at an image cold, so even if you don't post your intent until a bit after the original post, you could still post specific questions regarding it.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks I have to giving a critique is having an image posted that I have no idea why the person took it. Sometimes I can see what I think was that grabbed their eye, and so I try to make an image from it that speaks to me. But if I can't get that from the image, and the poster doesn't say, I don't feel like I can be much help.
I tend to lump images into three different categories:
The first are the ones that I can't read any intent from and don't see any that I would use. I can't critique these and they tend to have the feel of snapshots. The taker probably saw something cool, or maybe has an emotional attachment to the subject, but I don't know what it is.
The second one doesn't have a strong intent to it. I'm not directed to think anything specific, but I do see something in the image that can be focused on in that way. These I edit (if I have permission) to give my own view usinging the limited compostion ability of cropping and other edits. It may or may not be what the photographer inteded, but I feel that it has a stronger viewpoint than the original.
The third category is a bit more rare, and that's one that has a strong vision. I do know what the photographer intended, and any critique I give tries to further that vision and not change it to something of my view. I think Emma-Lee's
self portrait is a good example of this. It doesn't have to be a staged concept like this one, but the compositional elements need to be strong to start with so that I know what the image is trying to say to me. And she talks about what her version was in the text, in case we don't get that from the image.
I know these can seem like high falootin' ideas when all you care about is if the image looks cool, but that's what photography and a critique means to me. I think that's why both thinking about and talking about intent is so important.
