Is there a reason for images on forums?

[Andrew O'Neill]

Some very fine work on your website, John.

[Brian Ellis]

I have found that meaningful critiques were oftentimes not appreciated. It seems to me that people generally only want a casual "like".

You were one of the people I had in mind when I mentioned people here who could provide a meaningful critique if they had the time, which I'm sure you don't.

But you're probably right that most people just want a little praise. I was looking at another forum recently and somebody showed some photos from the Palouse that were wildly over-saturated - I mean so over-saturated that they made the Palouse look like it was lit with neon lights. When a couple people mentioned the over-saturation he got all huffy and accused the critics of being "elitist."

To the person above who said that nobody should post a critique here unless they themselves posted their own images here or on their web site- Walter Kerr never wrote a play that I know of, AFAIK Siskel and Ebert never produced a movie, Peter G. Davis never composed a symphony, etc. etc. Yet they and many others similarly situated were highly respected critics. I see no connection between posting here or on a web site, which I seldom do for a variety of reasons sufficient for me, and being able to provide a meaningful critique. And I don't mean that I'm such an expert that I could provide meaningful critiques, I'm thinking of people like Kirk and some others here.

[welly]

I have found that meaningful critiques were oftentimes not appreciated. It seems to me that people generally only want a casual "like".

I'd rather, at this stage in my large format photographic life, to get proper critiques rather than a casual "like". For me, it's essential to get proper feedback about my photography if I'm going to improve. But obviously that's me being reliant on other people giving up their time to critique my images.

[Peter Lewin]

Perhaps I'm missing the obvious, but the Post Your Images thread says right at the top, "Critiques should only be offered if requested by the original poster." Some of us (for example, me) do add a comment at the bottom of images we post, saying "critiques always welcome" or something to that effect, but most people who post do not. Therefore it should not be a surprise that few critiques, beyond a simple "I like that" (which hardly qualifies as a critique) are offered. Every once in a while someone starts a thread specifically requesting critiques for an image, and then there are more responses. There have even been cases where someone takes the posted image, crops or modifies it in some way, and re-posts it to show how they would have worked with the image.

[gth]

To answer the original question, I find that I can learn a lot from web posted image, even if they imperfect and not even close to their print presentation in tonality.

Namely

- Composition
- Lighting
- Posing of models
- Camera angles (view point)
- Different processing alternatives
- Different film stock
- Scanning alternatives
etc.

All of which can be best shown by an image.

Not to speak of superior artistic impact which can and does shine through an even mediocre web display.

So... OBVIOUSLY YES.

[Brian Ellis]

Perhaps I'm missing the obvious, but the Post Your Images thread says right at the top, "Critiques should only be offered if requested by the original poster." Some of us (for example, me) do add a comment at the bottom of images we post, saying "critiques always welcome" or something to that effect, but most people who post do not. Therefore it should not be a surprise that few critiques, beyond a simple "I like that" (which hardly qualifies as a critique) are offered. Every once in a while someone starts a thread specifically requesting critiques for an image, and then there are more responses. There have even been cases where someone takes the posted image, crops or modifies it in some way, and re-posts it to show how they would have worked with the image.

If you're missing the obvious it's that some of us do only critique when requested or in my case sometimes when the OP asks a specific question about something in the photograph, which I take to mean she or he wants some advice. But I almost never give any serious critique unless asked for and even then I've pretty much stopped for the reason Kirk and I discuss above.