Giving and Receiving C&C

[Bitter Jeweler]

:thumbup:

 

[redonyx]

I agree entirely. I come from the world of competitive public speaking where the C&C makes or breaks the speaker. I've had more than one whitewash both as a speaker and as a photographer and apart from stroking my ego, they do nothing for me.

I think this should be made a sticky thread since it is a good reference for new and experienced members alike.

 

[hower610]

When I first started posting here, if someone posted a photo for C&C, you could usually, within the first 2 or 3 replies get some honest and direct feedback on your photo. A trend I've seen lately, as highlighted by some recent threads (that I will not mention here) is saying "Good job!" or "Nice Shot!" to what can be called mediocre, or even bad photographs. The justification to this is usually one of two things...

I agree 100% with what you are saying. With that said, I have seen several threads where somebody, usually somebody new or less experienced posts, looking for C&C and usually the "experienced"/"professional" members of this group come across arrogant and rude. In my honest opinion this slows/deters newer members, like myself from posting pictures that they take. If newer members post and keep getting the rude and arrogant replies, chances are they will never improve. I do not mean to offend anybody, this is just my opinion.

 

[manaheim]

It's fascinating to see how cyclical a big internet community like this can be. I swear someone should write a thesis on this or something.

Do a search and look for "The Pact". It's ... very similar in many respects ... and by no means was it the first attempt at this sort of discussion.

Quite interesting.

 

[Gaerek]

I agree 100% with what you are saying. With that said, I have seen several threads where somebody, usually somebody new or less experienced posts, looking for C&C and usually the "experienced"/"professional" members of this group come across arrogant and rude. In my honest opinion this slows/deters newer members, like myself from posting pictures that they take. If newer members post and keep getting the rude and arrogant replies, chances are they will never improve. I do not mean to offend anybody, this is just my opinion.

Now, I know what you're saying, and I understand what you mean, but from what I've seen, in most of these circumstances, the thread you are seeing isn't the first where the 'arrogant' experienced member has tried to help the person. There's very few, as in, I can probably count on 2 fingers, members who are rude and arrogant to a beginner on their first post for C&C. Usually what happens is, they posted earlier, were given suggestions, and the next time they post, they ignored what they were told, usually using creativity as an excuse.

I could give you about half a dozen examples of this in the last month alone, but it's not my wish to single out individual members. I could give you 3 or 4 member names of people, just off the top of my head, of people who continually post for C&C, get defensive when they're given improvements, and keep posting the same mistakes over and over again. Again, I won't single anyone out, but just go through some of the requests for C&C over the last month or so, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

It's fascinating to see how cyclical a big internet community like this can be. I swear someone should write a thesis on this or something.

Do a search and look for "The Pact". It's ... very similar in many respects ... and by no means was it the first attempt at this sort of discussion.

Quite interesting.

The Pact has been mentioned in this thread. I haven't even been here a year, and I've seen this cycle a couple of times (this has also been mentioned). So maybe this will only help for a little while. Maybe it won't help at all. I've been getting frustrated with the type of C&C people have been giving, and expecting here lately. This was my little attempt to make this a better place for photographers to actually learn how to be photographers, rather than a place to praise the equivalent of little Johnny's crayon stick figure drawing on the refrigerator door.

 

[SoonerBJJ]

This thread should be required reading.

 

[SrBiscuit]

agreed.
well put...everyone.

 

[ilovemy50d]

Two thumbs up

 

[camz]

That's what is unfortunate part of having multiple skill levels in a community. Innaccurate CC hurts the novice even more as they are not capable of weeding out the advice that will help them towards where they need to go. One has to stay in the forum quite a bit and get to know each of the members a little bit more in order to see where they're CC is coming from and it took me a few months to get there.

Gaerek it's a good thing that you posted this as a reminder for the new faces around the community.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

Interesting thread Gaerek but I see the problem as a bit more complicated. C&C is an art in itself and can take as long to learn as shooting photos and it needs to be learned under the guidance of a more experienced person or persons. I believe it can be done here by learning to figure out who knows what they are talking about and who is just blowing hot air.

But that is not easy either when you're new to the medium. Not to mention that we have members who are more technical than artistic and others who are more artistic than technical and the two can clash.

Frankly, the two biggest problems I see that you didn't mention are the newbies who have just learned about a particular rule and think it should always apply. For example, I post a photo with a centered subject and it works just fine but Mr. Newbies has just learned about the rule of 3rds so he will tell me to use the RoT...

The second one is people who have made some serious progress in one or two areas of photo and get a lot of thumbs up. But then they post a bad photo and they just can't take it when it is pointed out to them that it is not good because they've gotten the big head.

As it has been pointed out, the people who could most benefit from this thread are the least likely to read it.

In the meantime, I just C&C and not worry too much about it. But, I do avoid some people who I know can't take reality or are not interested in it. Also, and it is not the main reason I don't post images, I would not want to subject myself to C&C here by people who don't know what they are talking about. And please, don't anybody get me wrong, I am not saying that nobody here knows what they are talking about, just that the percentage of people who do is way smaller than that of people who don't.

 

[Gaerek]

Interesting thread Gaerek but I see the problem as a bit more complicated. C&C is an art in itself and can take as long to learn as shooting photos and it needs to be learned under the guidance of a more experienced person or persons. I believe it can be done here by learning to figure out who knows what they are talking about and who is just blowing hot air.

But that is not easy either when you're new to the medium. Not to mention that we have members who are more technical than artistic and others who are more artistic than technical and the two can clash.

Frankly, the two biggest problems I see that you didn't mention are the newbies who have just learned about a particular rule and think it should always apply. For example, I post a photo with a centered subject and it works just fine but Mr. Newbies has just learned about the rule of 3rds so he will tell me to use the RoT...

The second one is people who have made some serious progress in one or two areas of photo and get a lot of thumbs up. But then they post a bad photo and they just can't take it when it is pointed out to them that it is not good because they've gotten the big head.

As it has been pointed out, the people who could most benefit from this thread are the least likely to read it.

In the meantime, I just C&C and not worry too much about it. But, I do avoid some people who I know can't take reality or are not interested in it. Also, and it is not the main reason I don't post images, I would not want to subject myself to C&C here by people who don't know what they are talking about. And please, don't anybody get me wrong, I am not saying that nobody here knows what they are talking about, just that the percentage of people who do is way smaller than that of people who don't.

I've thought about a lot of that also. I know it's a pretty complicated problem, but I figured it was worth a shot at distilling it down. I completely agree about the C&C being an art in and of itself, and the fact that some people are more artistic, and others are more technical (like myself). That's part of what makes a forum like this a great place to potentially learn a lot. The problem occurs when you have people who think that C&C is a code word for praise. If I give my dog a treat everytime it poops on the floor, what do you think that will lead to?

Now, I'm not saying that newbies are like dogs or anything like that, but the psycology of it is basically the same. If you give positive reinforcement to a behavior, that behavior will tend to be repeated more often. That's really what you can distill my original post to. People are positively reinforcing bad photographic behavior. Whether it's to a brand new newbie, a newbie who's learning, or whatever, it doesn't matter. If you don't have anything to say to help the person improve a shot, that's fine, but make absolutely certain you aren't reinforcing a bad habit.

EDIT: You mention the whole RoT thing. This is a rant I have in my blog linked below. It's somewhat similar. It's the idea that there's these "Rules" of photography, and people tend to think that rules shouldn't be broken, for one reason or another. It's not really related this the original topic, but since you mentioned it, I thought I'd mention this as a possible interesting read. The title is "There are no rules in Photography!"

 

[c.cloudwalker]

I know it's a pretty complicated problem, but I figured it was worth a shot at distilling it down.

I absolutely agree. If your thread helps only one person, it was still worth it.

I also agree that this place is great to potentially learn. Potentially is the operative word here because 1/ you will only learn if you want to and, if you can read and understand english (I have seen many threads where the same thing is said over and over and the OP just doesn't get it. And I'm not talking about foreigners whose mother tongue is not english) 2/ You need a bit of a thick skin. C&C is not always pleasant no matter how nicely things are said but, being on the internet, some people feel they can be curt and you just have to accept that and not let it get to you. I do it myself sometimes although I know it is not the best thing to do but I am no more perfect than anybody else and people looking for help here need to be able to just take it. It is not that big a deal. Not only that but I have found that in life there is more to learn from the unpleasant moments than from the pleasant ones...

I also agree that you should not reinforce bad behavior whether with your dog or with photography But what I was saying is that you have to give time to the newbies to learn to C&C. None of us are born knowing how to C&C anymore than we are born knowing photography. And the newbie is eager to use his new found knowledge so that sometimes it leads to post that are kind of stupid. It's not always easy but when those of us who know more run into such posts, we should C&C those bad posts along with the photo being offered in the first place. This, of course, would be a perfect world and there is no such thing as a perfect world so it doesn't happen very often.

A newbie does not necessarily know enough to know he/she is reinforcing bad habits and if we don't help them understand that, we are not doing our job as people with more experience. And I shouldn't even use the word experience here because I've seen plenty of "experienced" photogs who really are not that good and do things that are, to me, very strange.

Last, start your rules thread and I will post a heavy duty response but do it today or tomorrow. I am moving and will be basically gone from here as of Tuesday. Maybe it can be my last contribution

Now, I am going to go read your blog.

 

[Gaerek]

You need a bit of a thick skin. C&C is not always pleasant no matter how nicely things are said

QFT

I think this is the crux of the problem. People don't want to hear that there's something wrong with their photo. Unfortunately, you need to hear the bad to get better.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

I think I should have added that if you take C&C the correct way it is never unpleasant. C&C is a way to learn and most people (at least, I hope) are not being negative just for the sake of being negative. If you understand that C&C nothing more than another way to learn, the negative comments are no more unpleasant than the positive ones.

The big question, which I think you raised earlier, is whether you are here to learn or to boost your ego...

It does help to mention the good along with the bad although there is sometimes no good to be found It also helps to understand that not everyone expresses themselves in the same manner. I usually understand and agree with what Bitter Jeweler says (don't hate me Bitter) but I also understand that his way of putting things is going to get some people riled up. Spend some time reading him, get him, and imho there's no reason for a problem.

 

[hower610]

You need a bit of a thick skin. C&C is not always pleasant no matter how nicely things are said

QFT

I think this is the crux of the problem. People don't want to hear that there's something wrong with their photo. Unfortunately, you need to hear the bad to get better.

I disagree with this being the problem. If you are experienced or professional, you should act in that manneer, not like you are better than the op. Even if I am not the op, it tends to discourage me when I read the less then professional comments from the experienced/professional members. On the flip side of this, if the op receives less then professional comments, he/she should be the bigger person and not escalate the situation.