Constructive Criticism

Just my opinion, but I’d like to get a sense of what the rest of you think regarding comments and criticism. HDR Creme seems in danger of becoming a mutual admiration society, and a lot of members get defensive at the slightest hint of criticism. Images with obvious technical issues, and sometimes poor photographic technique, get high praise and ratings that aren’t realistic. Here’s my question: If we’re all that good already, how are we going to grow, and why aren’t we all professionals? I think it’s better to offer realistic ratings and targeted criticism, so we can learn from our mistakes and improve. If you can’t take criticism, don’t put your work in a public forum. If you’re offering criticism, be specific and explain why. Certainly trashing someone’s work for no reason is offensive. But pandering is offensive as well. Surely we can find a balance between the two extremes.

I agree. I’ve taken a break from posting anything as what I see occurring is a lot of the mutual admiration and not enough constructive criticism, which I believe has taken away from what I originally found on this site. I see many average pictures getting rave reviews, and some outstanding work go completely unnoticed. I believe there may be a lot of “I’ll rate your photo if you rate mine” going on as well, that ties into this. I’m not here to win a popularity contest. I’m all for getting back to where this site should be headed, which is a learning tool to expand our knowledge and increase our ability to produce high quality images, both technically and compositionally.

I could not agree more with both of you! I am actually glad mharb brought this up because I felt this way for quite a while!

I’m probably one of the “mutual admiration” society. But when you see people who contribute on a regular basis such as Digicam, Bob1140, Gemilang, Razfoto, Susank and few others who have taken the time to upload a photo but not only upload a photo and go away, they also leave feedback on other peoples work. So I feel that in focusing on these I am giving back something they give to me and others. That is not to say that I do not look at others work, I do, and if I see something that I like I will comment and vote, but I will not run down anybodys work. I realy hate it when my photos get criticism and if we are all honest so does everyone, but there is a way to criticize without upsetting a person ie, be polite and courteous. Respect the feelings of the receiver, afterall we are all learning! I do not expect to be pandered, but I do expect to be treated as a human being. I feel that my HDR photography has improved during the time I have been a member of HDR Creme and I have learnt a lot from seeing what others can do. Please remember photography and HDR for me is fun, I do not sell my photos and have no intention of doing so.

I compltely agree with this post. You can’t say anything even slightly negative about someone’s work here or you will find that all of your images are suddenly given ridiculously low ratings. It’s the reason that I got off of this site last year. It was more about egos than constructive critiquing of photographs.

Looking at the site now, I’m happy to see that the general quality of work has improved greatly. At the same time, I’m saddened to see that work which could be described as mediiocre at best is getting ratings of 10 by multiple people. I can only come to the conclusion that the people giving out these generous ratings are doing soo because they’re looking for others to reciprocate.

As a result, I’ll offer criticism to people whose work that I genuinely like, but if something is bad, I’m just going to ignore it, even if I have something constructive to say. You can rate something a 3 and give the photographer some good advice, but there’s no way to know in advance whether that person is going to take the criticism to heart or just think that you were the a-hole that didn’t like their work. I guess it’s human nature.

My Two cents…… I have a problem with the whole rating thing. To me (maybe it’s the way my mind works or doesn’t) but for some reason I struggle to attache a number to a piece of artistic expression. The whole concept is strange to me, I mean I can not remember a time when I went to an art gallery and thought to my self " Hmmm this is a definite nine out of ten" or “Man this is no better than a four.” I either like it or I don’t . It either evokes a feeling in me or does not. The whole concept is strange to me, like a deep fried snickers bar, it is just weird to me for some reason.

I agree about the voting. Comments should be enough. And people should be able to check off whether they want to receive comments or not. What’s the point of voting when you can’t give a photo anything lower than a 7 for fear of retaliation, even if you have constructive criticism to offer?

But methinks the actual reason for the voting is that it encourages people to come back to the site, and to spend more time on the site. This increases the site’s traffic. More traffic means the possibility of selling more ads. That’s how it works. And you can’t fault the site’s creators for it because they’re providing a service that’s basically free.

I love being criticize for as long it’s constructive. I’ll take it positively.

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Then post something and we will criticise it for you !!!!!