A critique of your photos or artwork is often confused with negative criticism (especially online). No matter how good your image, some people like to complain about things just to be negative for the sake of being negative.
The other extreme is “ego stroking”, where your photos are praised, without any context. Collecting likes does not help your photography any more than people complaining about something in your image without explaining why.
In the best case, a true constructive critique from a respected reviewer can be one of the most valuable ways to improve your photography (or really anything). Someone you respect, who knows your craft can let you know what you are doing “right”, as well as what (and how) to improve aspects that may not be quite as good. An objective eye can see the image for what it is, without any preconceived emotional context. 1
An example might be a photo of a sunrise. Criticism might be something like, “All sunrises are cliche”, while others may simply say “Wow” or “Great Shot” None of these are really helpful. A more helpful critique may be something like, “Good exposure and colour saturation, but the tree in the lower right is distracting, could you have moved farther to the left? or maybe crop it out?” This statement is more helpful, as it gives a direction to try next time. Of course, maybe there was a cliff to the left, and it was impossible to change the point of view, but compositionally, there was room for improvement.
Other helpful advice might be something like, “This image makes me feel happy/sad/excited/etc” or “did you try X? I wonder how that would have changed the image”. Of course we can only judge the image in front of us, and at the moment the image was taken, it may have been impossible to implement some of the suggestions (like the cliff above) and it is impossible to give a decisive comparison without seeing two different images to compare, but general advice can be used next time you are shooting a similar image.
Technical feedback can also be helpful, especially when beginning photography. for example “the horse in the foreground looks like it moved. could you have used a faster shutter speed?” A really good critique may open your eyes to different tools and techniques to learn so you can pull them out when future images might benefit. “if you wanted to show the motion of the horse, maybe a slower shutter speed to emphasize motion might have been interesting to try”
Sometimes the best critique can be questions on why you did things a certain way. A good critique is a (respectful) conversation between the photographer and the critic.
In summary, a critique is not just a dissection of the image, it should also include a “why” or a bit of advice on how to try something different next time. A good critique is a lesson to learn and apply on future images.
- sometimes itt is hard to be objective with photos we have a strong attachment with. for example, a photo of a loved nephew may be important to you, but may or may not be a “good photo” from an artistic point of view. ↩︎