Henri Cartier Bresson photo on Flickr DeleteMe

[LoveDSLR]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrerabelo/70458366/

I came across this from another site and like to share it here.

Maybe it is an answer to jsl's thread re: 'Beginners guide to finding flaws in your photos'..

[fletch]

Very old news but very funny. It just shows that you should take any critique you get from strangers on the internet with a pinch of salt.

[vandergus]

Pretty funny. Reminds me of one of my favorite posts about online photo critiques.

Great Photographers on the Internet

Not sure if things like this speak more to the ignorance of people or to the vast number of ways that art can be interpreted.

[oldwolf]

Art is subjective. I don't think any of the bad comments about the picture should be looked upon negatively.

One person might consider something art but another person might think it's trash. I know Picaso was a world famous artist but if I had the money I'd never buy one of his paintings because they don't do anything for me. It doesn't make him a bad artist because I don't like his works. It surely doesn't make me bad artist/photographer for not liking his work either. *shrug*

Just my two cents.

[vandergus]

Art is subjective. I don't think any of the bad comments about the picture should be looked upon negatively.

But that's exactly the what's wrong with most of the comments. The people aren't viewing the photographs subjectively. They're trying to critique them in a way that assumes a certain set of photographic rules, objective rules. The subject should be sharp. The horizon should be placed one third of the way from the top or the bottom. The foreground subject should be in focus.

A critique shouldn't say anything about what a piece of art should be, but what a piece of art is.

Is it underexposed, great, what does that convey to the viewer. Is there a distracting element that adds tension to the image, super, maybe tension is what the artist was trying to create. Most of the comments, however, are trying to guide the artist to something that fits within a predefined definition of what is good, which was probably created by photography contest judges.

In other words, I think critiques in general should focus more on saying, "This is what the photograph is" or "This is how the photograph makes me feel" than "This is what you should do to make it better".

[oldwolf]

Originally Posted by vandergus

But that's exactly the what's wrong with most of the comments. The people aren't viewing the photographs subjectively. They're trying to critique them in a way that assumes a certain set of photographic rules, objective rules. The subject should be sharp. The horizon should be placed one third of the way from the top or the bottom. The foreground subject should be in focus.

A critique shouldn't say anything about what a piece of art should be, but what a piece of art is.

Is it underexposed, great, what does that convey to the viewer. Is there a distracting element that adds tension to the image, super, maybe tension is what the artist was trying to create. Most of the comments, however, are trying to guide the artist to something that fits within a predefined definition of what is good, which was probably created by photography contest judges.

In other words, I think critiques in general should focus more on saying, "This is what the photograph is" or "This is how the photograph makes me feel" than "This is what you should do to make it better".

Maybe I should change my statement to "Art is personal." A critique is a critique. When someone says something about what a piece of art should be, then they are telling you what's lacking about it that would make it a piece of art in their mind.

They don't like it because it's underexposed. *shrug* No one asked them what emotions it evoked because it's underexposed.

I think critiques should be about what you like as well as what you don't like. If you want to find out what emotions the piece invokes in someone then you should ask "What emotions does this piece invoke and why?"

Now if the artist doesn't give a crap about what anyone thinks then sure they can still ask for opinions but would it serve their purposes or change how they created art if they received negative opinions about it? Better yet, should it change how they create art?

[MoonRunX]

lol fantine ownage once again. After we get enough photos we should do what marrilands photo ablum did and put them all on the first page....like an actual album

[vandergus]

I wasn't disagreeing with the statement that all art is subjective. I was disagreeing with the assertion that there's nothing wrong with the comments/critiques.

An example of a more helpful critique: NPR movie reviews. For the longest time NPR's (National Public Radio for non-Americans) movie reviews bugged me because they would never say whether a movie was any good or not. They wouldn't give recommendations that you should see it or even a certain number of stars or thumbs, they'd just tell you about the movie. They may say it's full of corny jokes or has scenes of unbelievable action, but never whether I should go see it or not. But then I realized, what if I like corny jokes and unbelievable action. It's ultimately up to me, the listener, to decide whether I would like this movie or not. Sure, they may imply that the acting's not up to par or the plot is weak, but they never come out and say, "This movie sucks!". They manage to say a lot about the movie while still leaving room for the subjective preferences of the listener.

The critiques in the links aren't misguided because they don't know who Henri Cartier-Bresson is or because they don't like Irving Penn's portraiture. They're misguided because they leave no room for my subjective prefereneces, or more importantly, the artist's. They assume that everybody else wants the photograph to look like they want it to look. The biggest mistake a critic can make, in my opinion.