Suggestions to newbies/noobs when posting photos for critique/review

[gmarquez]

Just my own personal suggestion to newbies/noobs when posting your first few photos for critique or review:

1. Think before you snap that picture. Make sure that it will be interesting to at least *some* of the 'general population' on this board. If it's a picture of a refrigerator, it had better be a very interesting refrigerator, otherwise you will get comments back like "well...it looks like a refrigerator". Or no comments at all. Take a picture of something you are actually interested in (your child, your sports car, your pet parakeet, a cool building, etc.), or take a picture of an ordinary object in an interesting way. But again, in my humble opinion, please no more "here is a shot of my bowling ball, what now" posts.

2. Please include a brief statement about what you yourself do or don't like about the photo you are posting, or what aspects of the photo you want critiqued. I *myself* have no problem with "can you think of anything to improve this" posts, but if the interesting aspect of the photo is not readily self evident (as in pictures of refrigerators or bowling balls), please go into more detail (something like "I was testing my auto focus system, so I took a photo of my bowling ball in a refrigerator").

This is not formal policy, as I am in no way affiliated with The PhotoForum. Think of these two suggestions as tools to get more people to give you serious and informative feedback on your photos.

:mrgreen:

 

[The_Traveler]

Post the one or two best rather than a bunch of unrelated pictures.

 

[darich]

A suggestion of the look you had in mind when shooting would help critiquers give a critique along the lines you had in mind.

 

[morydd]

1. Think before you snap that picture. Make sure that it will be interesting to at least *some* of the 'general population' on this board.

Actually, I'd disagree with this partly. The thinking may want to come between snapping the shutter and the posting. Sometimes you may not realize why a shot looks interesting before you actually see it. In my mind the great advantage for people like me is that I can take 50 pictures of something that might be interesting to make sure I don't miss the 1 of those 50 that actually is interesting. But the other 49 will likely never see the light of day. Don't be afraid to be brutal in your critique of yourself.

Editing is as important as anything if you want to grow as a photographer. For example, I spent several hours at the zoo a couple weeks ago. Shot close to 100 pictures. In the end, I only liked 2 enough to bother doing post-processing on, and didn't like either of those enough to post here.

If you honestly critique yourself first, you're more likely to get better critiques from others.

 

[gmarquez]

Actually, I'd disagree with this partly. The thinking may want to come between snapping the shutter and the posting.

:thumbup:

 

[The_Traveler]

Let me reiterate that thinking should come in this process somewhere before one posts.