Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I tend to agree with the author...

http://kennethjarecke.typepad.com/mostly_true/2012/02/chances-are-you-suck.html

ready? set? FIIIGGGGHHHTTT!!!!

obviously this guy does NOT play golf

I think the hardest part in the path to getting better isn't getting critique; but rather getting a mentor. Someone who'll rip your shit apart AND point you to a path of what you need to be looking for and what to pay attention to. I dont need to be spoon fed, that defeats the purpose, but stuff that I didn't see at the time pointed out to me would already be HUGE.

Like someone once told me "there's nothing worse than an indifferent reaction" to your photograph. Loving the photo and hating the photo are great things to a photographer, because they're emotions on extreme scales. Indifference involves no emotion; not a good thing

that's exactly where we come in

Hahaha, the golf comment is so true.

Well said. And as far as golf... let's hope the season starts early with this warm weather trend!

I would rather get a emotional reaction then a crop here or clone this out because it is a distraction.

I think most ppl on Flickr know at least one female photog that can put up any image and it will get plenty of positive reviews. The problem is that it doesn't matter if the image is good or let's say not so good she will get the same positive reviews. It makes it harder to improve if no one will be honest about what they think about your work for fear of performing social suicide.

The trick with golf is to only play with people you can beat.

I've been using Google+ for a bit over a moth now and you should see how bad it is. There's some pretty terrible photographers on there with 10,000+ followers; you can really tell that it's negatively affecting their ability to grow, and they continue to produce the same crap and keep getting +1's and comments.

Yes, thankfully you can just ditch them from your feed.

+1

Nice article!

A mentor or lots of hard work will teach you the business and technical side of things. However, understanding how to pull the right emotional strings in a consumer with imagery is something special. We are all born with creativity, its fun... really fun! Thats why we loved crayons growing up or perhaps modifying images with photoshop when we got our first crack at the app. However we are not all created equal. Creating for fun vs solving a creative brief are very different. You go from "anything goes" to the challenge of creating something that must appeal to a specific demographic and make your client happy (make them money). The ability to deliver under those circumstances is far more challenging and open to infinite critiques. Some people do better than others but to be consistently great at it is very rare. Statistically speaking, the title is accurate.

As for critiques, I prefer honesty over sugar-coating for anything. I find it far more beneficial in the long run. Opinions are subjective but if enough people are honest and say the same thing... its probably true. Don't shut it out, learn from it.

Another great point was how social media is a horrible place for honesty because everyone wants to be the good guy. That is very true.

Just curious, which Google+ group?

thanks.

It's google's attempt at a social site.
You can arrange your contacts into different circles (friends, photogs,...) each will act as a different news feed. They have some interesting groupwear and group video chat to be expected with google. Many photogs are using it.

Yeah, but I want to know who to add to my circle, I am only following some rumour sites now in my Google+

One could only be 'bad' at something if there is an accepted standard of 'good' already in place. The problem with photography is that there is no clear cut separation of whats good and whats bad photography. What was once bad is good and what was once good is bad. Martin Parr is a hack to many and a genius to many others, Ansel Adam's work is boring to many and great to many others etc.. I especially find the idea of critique in photography as something that is helpful on the very basic entry level after that its simply a waste of time. People take the same photos all their lives, the only difference is perhaps gear or a better understanding of the technique, otherwise the basic structure of photos remain the same, this is something beyond my scope to elaborate but if people believe that taking photos is an unconscious-driven activity then they're not surprised to see how all their photos share the same basic characteristics despite their efforts to 'improve'.

In the case of some fortunate people that 'characteristic' in their photos is appreciated by others and they become famous, on the case of a vast majority it goes unnoticed.

In the end of the day all photos suck and all of them are interesting, the bigger problem is if anyone really cares anymore.

this is why I belong to a critique group of real people that get together in real life and show images in print and digital. We get together monthly.

I would think it would be even harder to give honest critique to someone in person as opposed to online lol.

Real life peer group critiques seem to work better then online, especially if you are each using prints. It is different if one person sets them self up as an expert.

Where would I find info on these types of groups? I would be interested in something like this.

Right here on TPMG:

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6055&hilit=critical+eye

Interesting. If membership to these types of these things is open to anyone, how can you be sure that the group getting together are a peer group? For example; would a fine art photographer really value the opinion of a fashion or landscape photographer; or vice versa? I guess what I'm saying is that, in order to really absorb critique of your work, you have to find some sort of merit in the work of the one's giving you the critique.

One type of photographer may find a photos imperfections or inconsistencies to have some sort of artistic value, where another type might not.

Gandhi said: "Everyone should be heard, but some should be heard more then others." Different points of view can't be a bad thing.

I have a friend, an opera singer who had her voice almost ruined by an "expert" instructor that wanted to change it into something it wasn't. It's up to the photographer to decide and use what they think has merit for them.

Great points Ryan.

This thread just got deep.
Great points indeed.

When you post a photo for critique and one person says its too flat, unreal, colors off and the horizon is not level. Then another person says its perfect. Then another person says great colors and very real looking. Out of all this what does one learn, except not to listen to anyone. The mentor idea sounds really good and helpful. But what if you had 3 mentors? Would that result in the same kaos results from online critiquing where everybody has an opinion, or want to be contrary to the previous post, or want to agree with it?

You should always seek mentors whose work you admire or aspire to emulate. Same goes for critiques - only listen to the those with bodies of work that you espect. Take the rest with a grain of salt.

If you are lucky or unlucky enough to have 3 mentors for the exact same thing and you are getting confused then I suggest you have 2 or 3 mentors too many. You might want to practice a monogamous relationship



Sounds to me to be a very counter productive way of learning anything.

IMHO the job of a Mentor is not to tell a student what to do but to help him or her understand, also to suggest directions, help them get beyond some technical paint by numbers or formula rule book.

I think its very counterproductive to listen to 10 people with various skill levels and knowledge, giving their opinions.

The easy answer is: Then don't.

As you used the word counterproductive I'm going to assume you were replying to my statement and not making a new one. If this is the case then I reiterate: Learning to not listen is counterproductive. Learning to listen then filtering, extracting useful information and then asking additional relevant questions are how should I say it: learned skills. Skills that some of us never master or take a lifetime to master.

Is it less productive than getting no opinions at all? Or as the article describes, only getting positive feedback to stroke your ego?

It's not hard to choose which feedback to take seriously, just look at the work of the person giving the feedback. There's people giving opinions on every street corner, every radio station and every tv channel. Would you rather take it all in and choose what to absorb or shut everything out?

A lot of photographers seem to have this notion in mind that they're shooting for others, and therefore their photos must be 'good' in a generally accepted but abstract sense and thus they're obliged to learn and improve. Unfortunately things have changed pretty rapidly since digital became ubiquitous. For one its very unlikely that more then a few people will have a look at one's photos and that also very rapidly but most importantly, those same viewers take their own photo as well. This state of current photography cancels the notion of personal responsibility of a photographer to cater to an audience, because everyone and their kids are taking photos.

The big question is what does it really mean to be a photographer in a world where everyone is a photographer?

I think the answer is quite simple, the only way to be a photographer these days is not to be a photographer in the traditional sense. Take photos for yourself only and share them if you like, otherwise even if you do it will not make any difference whatsoever... Once literacy was the domain of clergy then everyone got a basic education and could read and write; once photography was the domain of a select few and now everyone is taking photos. On that note enjoy photography as a purely personal thing and the same way that you won't take your personal journal for others to critique, the same way don't belittle your photos as well.