I belong to a photo-critique group on Flickr. It’s one that tries, more than many, to encourage the participants to offer substantive comments that will help us improve technically and artistically. I strive in my commentary to offer useful feedback, while maintaining high standards of artistic excellence. Needless to say, people don’t always agree about the contents or merits of each others’ views.

Recently I received a message from another member of the group pool [slightly redacted for privacy]:

several of your comments on not just my but others photos seem to suggest that they fail because they include extraneous items in the composition – you do not offer a reason for finding them unsatisfactory, and it comes across as your being exclusively interested in what i would term still life scenes 

of course, you are quite accomplished in that way, but perhaps i am missing a reason for addressing photos shot in a different manner as if they should be still lifes – i am taking my current post on … as an opportunity to query you on this

in this case i could perhaps have waited several lifetimes for a guy in a kayak to cruise by with a dog in the bow and only a formally desirable set of figures to complement the scene – i know that sounds snarky, but what else am i to think??

This was my response:

In my view, making a serendipitous photo of people that has deep artistic merit is very, very difficult to do ~ among the very most challenging pursuits in photography. Achieving that magical combination of coherent and engaging composition, technical sufficiency, substantive meaning, and genuine emotion in a candid image of people is just spectacularly hard. The “decisive moment” is never easy to come by. Of the tens of thousands of pictures I’ve taken of people in public places and spontaneous situations, I consider only a dozen (at most) to have any lasting value. There are a bunch more that are just okay, enjoyable enough to look at once or twice, or pleasant souvenirs to remind me of specific people and situations, but not “wall-worthy.” Ultimately, a great deal of photographic excellence is editorial: setting aside the images that just aren’t all that and a bag of chips. 

Those are my views and my standards. (I don’t claim to be any more successful than anyone else at reaching them; in fact, I fail as much or more than the rest.)

My understanding of the purpose of a group like … is that we are trying to help each other approach artistic excellence by applauding when we succeed and suggesting how we could do better when we fall short. If all you want from viewers is an automatic seal of approval, I’m unlikely to provide much gratification. I will, however, always give my honest assessment (and you will note that I have more than once congratulated you on a successful image).

If and when I have a new street/people image that I consider sufficiently interesting to submit to the pool, I’ll certainly do that, and I’ll read with interest what pool members have to say about it and hope to derive something of value from others’ comments. I rejoice in the opportunity to learn where I can.

But, ultimately, as I’m sure you know, the only opinion that truly matters in the development of one’s vision is one’s own. If you are truly happy with your product, who cares what I or anyone thinks? If you love an image and wouldn’t change a thing about it, or aren’t curious about how it might have been handled differently, why bother posting it in a critique group?

If my opinion and values are not of interest to you, you are of course free to disregard them. We do not have to agree.

I strongly suspect that this response will not especially please the person who wrote me. He just wants me to like his pictures, warts ‘n’ all. Which I entirely understand. We ALL want people to like, nay love our pictures, our babies, our preciouses.

Don’t ask for a critique unless you’re prepared to hear something other than “I love it!!” Don’t ask for a critique and then pout when someone’s opinion and standards don’t coincide with your own. Learn from criticism if you can, but be prepared to reaffirm your own judgment in the face of disagreement from others. If everyone tells you your work sucks, it may in fact suck.

Or, they could all be wrong. It’s happened before.