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Article 2 of the series (still waiting on Michael Reichmann to publish at Luminous Landscape) discusses how to go about getting some outside hopefully unbiased advice on your skill levels.
Article 3 written in rough discusses what I think is the one thing that would be most productive to do to move beyond a given level, both technically and aesthetically. While completely subjective, and certainly not the only way to move on, I wanted people to get 'the biggest bang for their buck', both money and time wise.
If you are interested in seeing the second and third articles, perhaps you should let Michael know.
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4 comments:
Why not post the articles here, as well?
Well (unlike in part 1) I don't really have any argument with your advice, but there is one area that needs to be considered.
That is the intention of the photographer. Let's look at it from the point of view of easel painters. When Picasso entered his cubist period or when Jackson Pollack started doing his paint drips the end product was different from what people had seen in the past.
It was difficult for people to relate to the images and to comment on them intelligently (which of course didn't stop them anyway).
While photography seldom goes that far away from its roots, there are still those who follow their own muse. Getting feedback that is useful to them may be difficult and people who misunderstand their goals may end up discouraging the pioneers.
This seems to be true, especially in the cases where the pictures are about "nothing". That is abstractions, or patterns or other non-representational images. Especially with photography people seem to expect a photo to be "of" something and those that aren't are misjudged.
If a person is pursuing this type of aim then family, friends or camera clubs may just not be the right audience...
Michael tells me that he's posting article two tomorrow (friday). Robert has a good point about atypical photographs. It can be challenging to get useful feedback when you are breaking new ground. I would argue though that Jackson Pollock and Picasso both had superb artistic skills before they developed their own radically different and therefore hard to evaluate style.
There are unfortunately a lot more photographers who try to do it the other way round, usually unsuccessfully and any fame they do acquire tends to be fleeting.
Remember too that this is entirely a self evaluation - sure you can and should get feedback, but in the end you choose which photographs to have evaluated and you choose how to interpret the feedback you get.
Lets say for example that you have been photographing for 4 years and for the last 15 months all you have been photographing is highly out of focus blurs in various shapes and tones. It's easy to do, anyone could do it, so the question then is whether you have done it well. Sure we can't comment on your ability to focus, but we can comment on the quality of the prints, we can give feedback about composition, we can even say whether it's an idea that moves us.
The more offbeat the idea, the greater the risk that none of us will get it. In that case it's a matter of who you ask, and if you have asked the right people and no one gets your photography but your mother, well then there are two possibilities, either you are way ahead of your time, or it's absolute crap - and only time will tell which.
Oh my god, there is really much helpful info here!
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