What are you looking for?

[freezeframe03]

This may not be the place for this, but since it's a question about this section, it seemed the best place for it.

Out of curiosity...to those of you who are viewing these photos that are put up for critique, but not making any comments, what are you looking for? There are lots and lots of views and so very few critiques. This section used to be quite active, so maybe it's the nature of the most current active members.

Are these photos so horrible they aren't worthy of critique? Are you looking for one that is really bad that would make it easy to critique? Do you look at them and tell yourself what you would critique and maybe are unsure that you should actually put your critique in writing?

MODS: If this is inappropriate, please do with it whatever it is you would do with it.

[vegepunkstr]

I like to learn from other peoples pictures. I look at the picture and read all of the critique so I know what to do or not to do. I dont think I have enough knowledge to critique the pictures myself right now so I dont want togive wrong advice or just say nice picture every time when thats not what you are looking for when you post for critique. I am sure I am not the only one that does this either. I am sorry that you arent getting the amount of replies that you are looking for but I hope that helps explain a lot of the views.

[PrimeTime]

Originally Posted by freezeframe03

This may not be the place for this, but since it's a question about this section, it seemed the best place for it.

Out of curiosity...to those of you who are viewing these photos that are put up for critique, but not making any comments, what are you looking for? There are lots and lots of views and so very few critiques. This section used to be quite active, so maybe it's the nature of the most current active members.

Are these photos so horrible they aren't worthy of critique? Are you looking for one that is really bad that would make it easy to critique? Do you look at them and tell yourself what you would critique and maybe are unsure that you should actually put your critique in writing?

MODS: If this is inappropriate, please do with it whatever it is you would do with it.

Hi freezeframe, alot of people are afraid to give a critique. This happens alot, so don't take it personal.

As far as your photo, i think you did a good job. You retained the mood , with the exposure you chose. It was a very high contrast situation.(bright lights in a dark room). You only have a couple options. Use some fill flash and ruin the mood of the shot; bracket the exposure and combine them in post; or keep the mood of the shot and slightly blow out the highlights on the hand.

If you shoot a bracketed shot next time, you can make a tiff file with the highlights of the hand exposed correctly (if you shot it in raw, you still may be able to do this) and blend it in with a layer mask.

Put the original shot on the bottom layer............open the tiff file of the properly exposed hand as a layer. Add a layer mask set to black and mode to value. Choose a brush set to white(color), opacity set to around 20 and paint in the area of the hand and it will show through.(make shure you clicked on the mask or you will paint on the photo). When your done, add a small amount of gaussian blur to the mask to help blend it in.

Hope this helps.

[freezeframe03]

I'm not asking for critique on my photo in this thread. I've just noticed that there are very few responses to most of the photos put here for critique so I was just wondering why that is. As I mentioned previously, this used to be quite an active section but that doesn't seem to be the case any longer.

Thanks Vegepunkstr, I think you must be right and that's probably how many viewers feel. You should still offer your opinions of a photo in critique because it will make you even more aware while taking your own photos. If you voice your thoughts, you'll put more thought into what you are looking at whether it be someone else's photo or the one you are looking at through your view finder.

[buttershug]

Originally Posted by vegepunkstr

I like to learn from other peoples pictures. I look at the picture and read all of the critique so I know what to do or not to do. I dont think I have enough knowledge to critique the pictures myself right now so I dont want togive wrong advice or just say nice picture every time when thats not what you are looking for when you post for critique. I am sure I am not the only one that does this either. I am sorry that you arent getting the amount of replies that you are looking for but I hope that helps explain a lot of the views.

I'm with you vegepunkstr, but I've started to force myself to comment. I figure if I want to get - I better give. (But I tend to put in a newbie disclaimer too)
Be bold and comment!

[Marija]

freezeframe03 I'm with you

For those who don't comment because they feel they don't have enough knowledge I'll tell my experience.
When I join this site, at first I was just reading and looking around...after a while I posted my first photo for a critique, then after a while I posted another... I felt I need some courage to comment on someone's photo because I don't know enough about photography, but the time people spent looking at my bad photos and commenting and I being grateful to them made me realize that someone who also put their photo for critique would be grateful to me and my time, no matter I don't know that much...
So I started to commenting and a funny thing happened to me...As I started to pay attention to what I will say to someone and how I will do that I noticed (what a surprise for me) that sometimes I really have something useful to say.
Recently I got scared again since I had to comment more seriously about composition, technique, PP... I told people that I simply can't do that because I feel I don't have enough knowledge to do that. Then someone said (a big Thank You! to him) that it doesn't really matter if you don't know that much, it matters that you feel something about a photo...Sometimes a fresh look is needed. He said that he learned more when he was commenting on other people photos then he learned from being commented.
And now I'm learning with commenting on other people's photographs and those comments are surprisingly great lessons for me!
So my advice is Just Do It! You'll benefit from the time you spend analyzing and writing about someone else's picture and off course, you'll help someone in the process!

[Jim Poor]

In general, I don't feel that the DPS critique section is a great place to seek HONEST critiques, and truly honest critiques are seen as mean, rude, etc even when there are obvious flaws in an image, so I don't bother very often.

[Marija]

When I post a photo I really expect to hear an honest, strict critique and hope for some advices. Otherwise, how can I learn?!
So far I posted maybe 5-6 photos and I was satisfied with people's way of commenting them. Guess I was lucky!
When I give my opinion I do it in the most honest way...You came to Critique Section to seek some opinions and I'll give you....but there is a huge difference between rude and honest!
"OMG are you kidding!? What have you done with this photo?! (recently there was such a comment on a photo) and "IMO you over saturated it...I would suggest you not to put your subject in the center...your photo doesn't evoke anything for me...half of your photo is just blown out...etc.

[freezeframe03]

Originally Posted by Jim Poor

In general, I don't feel that the DPS critique section is a great place to seek HONEST critiques, and truly honest critiques are seen as mean, rude, etc even when there are obvious flaws in an image, so I don't bother very often.

As Marija has said, there's a big difference between rude and honest. There's always a constructive way of saying your photo sucks. So, it's probably more helpful to us amateurs that you don't bother. Photos in the critique section are not there as a competition. This is supposedly a learning website. The photos are there for others to point out what we ourselves don't obviously see...yet. And even the most untrained eye is capable of seeing a place for improvement that the amateur photographer has missed. As the amateur photographer, you then weed out what you agree with and discard what you don't feel in agreement with and go from there to your next photo.

[Jim Poor]

I think you both missed my point. I've been a moderator on a critique-heavy site and we had specific guidlines in place. The "Motto" if you will, was "Honest, but gentle." We specifically discouraged any comment that was along the lines of "great shot" without some justification for it being great. We also didn't allow "this one sucks" type comments.

I'm not talking about "you suck" type critiques, I'm talking about something as simple as "You missed the point of focus."

In general, the folks who frequent DPS seem to me to be much more fragile than the folks at other sites that are more critique-focused. That said, every now and then I venture into the critique section.

As for the "OMG, What have you done to this photo?" I wouldn't say that to an OP, but I did say something very close to that to someone who downloaded and "fixed" an original and made it a total wreck. This wasn't an amateur either. He should have known better.