I hope you all (or the Americans at least) had as wonderful a Thanksgiving as possible given the circumstances. I’m also going to announce a Zoom meet and greet for a couple weeks from now (probably Dec 8th or 9th at 8pm), so keep an eye out for that.
I’m still a little beat up but improving finally and managed my first photo walk in three weeks, which felt amazing. Even cold and quiet days where you don’t come back with a great keeper are so important. I feel like I probably come back with a true keeper every 5-7 medium length walks that I do. Obviously, the hit rate is higher on bigger photo days, but the important thing, particularly during winter is to enjoy the walk and try not to think too hard about getting the best photo of your life.
So heading into a dreary winter (for most of us), I wanted to create an interesting month-long challenge.
The challenge is going to be called Dreamlike. For those of you who want to participate, the idea is to create new work (no old work) that has a dreamlike feel, and also keeping within the Close to Home theme or any area you frequent as part of your daily life.
You can take this in any direction you want. Dreamlike photos can be tack sharp and colorful. They can be dreamlike because of the scenes and objects or people in the photographs, or they can be dreamlike because of the look of the photos as well. You can use blur, black and white, you can make things more abstract, take detail shots, or take strange shots within your home. The sky is the limit with this challenge.
I also want to share two photographers that have done this extremely well.
So this is the first of the inspiration posts. I’m not sure if I’ll continue this in written or video form but for now, we’ll do written because I’m dealing with a bacterial infection from food poisoning (thankfully not COVID) and you do not want to see me on video! Once these insane antibiotics wear off, I’ll set up a date for a Zoom meeting for those who want to attend.
There are still 13 people we’re waiting on to fill the beta, but I think about half of those will sign up soon and I’ll consider that fully stocked. Make sure to go through your group and friend everyone in them.
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.
