Photo Critique: "Planting", Feb 1, 2023

[Alan Klein]

I want to thank everyone who posted with the thought that the idea of "critique" was different from Photographic 101 instruction. I was a bit depressed after I posted above, feeling that this was going to be, to use Jnantz’s line, just “another thread with an image and people suggesting crops or camera movements or a different developer or developing /printing technique to use.”
I refused to accept that an OP would knowingly post an image for a “critique” that they knew was so faulty that they wouldn’t make a print of it. And yet here we are. This underlines the apparent difference between an on line critique and a one on one Critique. One wouldn’t get very far with an in person Critique if there was no print, much less the very best print of the very best picture you could make.
I would encourage posters to try to keep a distinction between Photo/composition 101 instruction threads and a Critique. This is an evolving concept here, but if there is no difference in practice, what is the need for different titles.
I would suggest Op’s should post their best. Here is a very simple site for posters who wouldn’t read the book.

https://floresphotoclass.edublogs.or...5-10ng3qs.pptx
Please keep in mind that, yes, I may be taking this way too seriously, eh!

No offense taken. I have a lot more photos that I would be glad to print. But your point is well taken. I selected this one knowing there were a lot of issues with it. I wanted to see how I could correct them and what I did was wrong by depending on other more capable photographers than me to make recommendations. Especially because I'm new to LF cameras. One of the purposes of a critique I believe is to make us better photographers. So I have to let my dirty stuff hang out if I want to learn. Thanks again for your comments.

[Tin Can]

Please post what YOU think is best work

Testing us is a bad idea

[bmikiten]

I enjoy this type of work. I often find myself looking at images like this an wondering about the history, the family that lives there or those who have lived there and worked the land in the past.

Technically, it is well framed and the I like the overall look of the image. It would be interesting to see the print with a bit more brightness in the clouds and even the building to help it stand out a bit. The tree (is it in focus?), while a strong element, appears dark and one that I might try to lighten with either dodging or masking. The fence is well placed but tends to blend into the foreground which may have been unavoidable. I'd look at using a different (yellow) filter in the field to perhaps generate a bit of separation here. It is a pleasing image and one I'd be happy to have taken.

[Vaughn]

In a critique, a lot of effort is required from all parties -- photographer, image/print, and the critiquers.

It is easy to say that we do not like the tone of the sky, or that an object/subject should or should not be centered. But such comments would be far more beneficial if followed up with the reasoning behind the comments.

With Alan's image I would prefer a lighter sky if it were my image, which it is not. But I would like to communicate with Alan and have him consider the importance of the tone of a sky and how that affects how people will react to images. Obviously a dark, stormy, or dramatic sky would give the home a very different feel.

Close to Alan's original composition and a lighter sky would (for me) create a stronger feeling of age, abandonment and isolation of the home (simply more empty space around it)...something people tend to react strongly to. It is not that I think Alan needs to do this with this particular image, but it is something to have in one's head when out looking for images. A tool for the tool chest.

[h2oman]

My post, to which Bernice is responding below, does not specifically address the image in question. I have chosen to move it to the original discussion about online critique, now found in the feedback thread: https://www.largeformatphotography.i...=1#post1670613

[Bernice Loui]

“Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper. the photographer begins with the finished product”
― Edward Steichen

"To be able to take my pictures, I have to look, all the time, at the people and places I care about. And I must do so with both ardor and cool appraisal, with the passions of eye and heart, but in that ardent heart there must also be a splinter of ice."
~Sally Mann

"Some of my pictures are poem-like in the sense that they are very condensed, haiku-lik. There are others that, if they were poetry, would be more like Ezra Pound. There is a lot of information in most of my pictures, but not the kind of information you see in documentary photography. There is emotional information in my photographs."
~Sally Mann

"Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion... the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate."
~Dorothea Lange

"Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit."
~Dorothea Lange

"The arts are not simply skills: their concern is the intellectual, ethical, and spiritual maturity of human life. And in a time when religious and political institutions are so busy engraving images of marketable gods and candidates that they lose their vision of human dignity, the arts have become the custodians of those values which most worthily define humanity, which most sensitively define Divinity."
-Robert Shaw


What has been "learned" from " critique" _?_


Bernice

One of the purposes of a critique I believe is to make us better photographers.

So I have to let my dirty stuff hang out if I want to learn. Thanks again for your comments.

[Bernice Loui]

Enforcement of Conformity in "Foto_graphs"... ala, do as us, to be "accepted"... aka critique's end game.... tribal membership..

Bernice

William (should we call you Bill?),


Finally, regarding in-person critiques with prints: I once took a dozen plus prints to a 45 minute critique session with a photographer who has several books published and is represented by a number of galleries, including the AA Gallery, Weston Gallery, Howard Greenburg Gallery in NYC, among others. (No that doesn't necessarily make him especially qualified to critique, but he has rubbed shoulders with a number of far more famous photographers, and I believe has done some teaching.) He looked through all the prints carefully several times. For one he commented that my choice of framing was interesting, and that I had left out something that he wanted to see. He concluded with something like "You should consider using more interesting toning." (His own work is very warm-toned.) After a long pause he said something like "I guess if you want something more specific, I would try to bring out more detail here, in this one." That was it.

[Bernice Loui]

If the goal is to be a "better" photographer, be a better human, Deeply understand the human condition and discover all that is within one self and how oneself and is connected and inseparable from the Much Greater Whole and acceptance of oneself and the Much Greater Whole..


Bernice

[Bernice Loui]

At extremes... bullying..
Tribalism is an innate aspect of the human condition..

Myopic example, ponder why lightweight field folder view camera for outdoor landscape images and all related has become today's definition of view camera's popularity and fashion_?_

Bernice

Really, tribal membership & enforcement of conformity ?

[Doremus Scudder]

...
We do not know what your purpose was regarding this image, so we cannot comment on the success of the picture.
...

Remind me to never state directly what my purpose was when making a photograph