How to Comment and Critique

Commenting on the photos of your fellow group members is by far the most important aspect of this salon.

We’re here for inspiration and education of course, but having a group of people get to know you and your work intimately, to be able to learn to trust their opinions, and to have them help guide you along the way, that’s the key.

Commenting and guiding another person’s work can be difficult. We all want to be pleasant of course, but at the same time, we don’t want to skirt around helping a photographer with the advice they need.

The internet makes this issue even tougher. 

Sitting around a table and looking at photographs with good friends, saying something like ‘this photo doesn’t really do it for me,’ is a totally normal thing to say. That might even feel pleasant and fun to hear in person because you know you’re getting some real opinions. 

But on the internet, it can feel harsher, and that’s a big reason why people stay away from constructive criticism like this.

Keep in mind that it will take time for the groups to become comfortable with each other and for tougher comments to emerge, particularly at first and in an online forum. It’s much easier to give tougher critiques to people you don’t know well in a live setting.

It can be a good idea to ask for them. But the group will progress with this as time goes on.

Live group critique sessions will start to be held once the group has some time under their belt together – and this is a major catalyst for how a group evolves with getting to know each other and improving at critiquing everyone’s work.

If someone is critiquing you here, it’s important to imagine you are sitting around a table with a person you know – and you WILL get to know your group members better over time. 

Assume everything is said with a pleasant and helpful tone. And if you are doing the critiquing – people need to hear everyone’s thoughts, but understand how you might come off through a website versus in person.

There are two main goals here – inspiration and education, and it’s a fine line between both. We have to help each other to improve our photography, but even more important is to help to figure out what drives and excites a person. Sometimes a granular piece of technical advice is the way to go but just as often a big picture thought or sparking an idea in their head will be more important.

This salon is going to have photographers of different experience levels, and that’s a feature I think will provide a significant benefit. We need a wide variety of advice and a beginner’s advice could easily end up being much more helpful than an expert’s.

The point here is to please don’t hesitate to give your opinion on the work of anyone in your group. And on the flip-side, please encourage advice from everyone.

Another issue, which I think happens often, is that people get strictly too granular with their advice. 

Specific advice on the details of photos is great and encouraged, but much more important in my opinion, is trying to give overall advice on the direction a photographer is going.

Keep up with a photographer’s album as they grow it. How does the work make you feel? What makes you the most excited about it? What would you like to see more of? Would you like to see more people, more environment shots, should they try to capture more interior photos or intimate photos in their daily life? 

This overall advice is immensely important for a photographer. It will allow them to start to understand how many different people interpret the world they are creating.

When you are critiquing someone, I think it’s also important to understand where they’re coming from. I change up my advice somewhat for people with different experience levels and interests. And most important is to inspire and help people figure out their future direction with their work.

We’re going to try to make this place feel as much like a bunch of photographers sitting around a table as we possibly can. But we need everyone to do their part to make this happen.