Good Flickr groups?

I joined flickr a looooooong time ago (2004), so I was able to start a few groups when the real estate was available: I Shoot Film, Rangefinder Cameras and Russian Cameras. The film group is the most popular with almost 20,000 members (yay, film!), but quality is hit-or-miss (but they're all film). I reduced the posting limit on Rangefinder Cameras and that improved the quality a bit. Russian cameras is fun, but is largely lomo-type stuff.

I find some of the lens-, developer- and film-specific groups very useful when exploring gear options. Some favourites are Jupiters Rule, Eastman Double XX, Zeiss lenses and Nokton 35mm f/1.4.

In terms of quality shots, I find a lot of great stuff in the Magnumesque pool. It's heavily curated, but the curation is pretty good IMO.
 
Slightly OT from the original groups question. But an enjoyable way of spending time on flickr is to go the pages of some of the photographers you like, and view their favourites.
 
irq506 said:
Im a member of flickr, I have been for quite some time, its a place to up your work and show it to the masses and sometimes make a friend or two. However if you are looking for constructive crit you are never going to get it.....

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Dear Friend,

I should be openind a new thread on the issue of phography critique, instead of ryding on your message to throw a few words. But today I have no much time available, so kindly excuss me to enter this issue in this interesting thread about flickr.

Making a good critique, (not necessarily a positive plus points one) is a very difficult task, most of us seem to forget. We forget it so easily because a good critique is an extremely valuable force.

It is not so difficult when whe have to judge what is the best picture among a certain group, or the best photographer among several. But there is a great problem for all what is below that. It is not an impossible mission, but a very hard one.

Because when you are not on the top, a necessary pre-condition for me to write my impressions about the strong and weak sides of your image, is that both of us be in kind of highly mutually trustable state of mind. It is very easy to get hurt, and once you get hurt both sides will be alienated.

The second obstacle is that the one writing the critique must know the evolving process of the photographer he is criticizing, in order to be able to point to one problem a time, instead of throwing on your head all the weak sides at once. And this is a process.

Therefore, we are speaking not only about photographic skills, but also about pedagogic skills. We had an ex-member from NY, very found of the 500 CEOs, who teaches photography somewhere and proclaimed himself on RFF pages, time and again, as an "Artist" - who never dared to use his skills to make a single critique here at RFF. After seeing myself his work on 9/11 I can say that he doesn't fall from any current Magnum photographer. But after meeting and reading him time and again here at RFF, it is my strong opinion that beyond self-PR and his photographic skills, one of his weak points, to my humble opinion was that he lacked a minimal sense of pedagogy (despite being a photo-teacher!) - and accordingly within his mind he didn't wanted to hurt. A giant life reduced to a dwarf.

As for the "Wow!" and so on that you find so widely both in Flickr and at RFF, well it is a human reaction, I would rather sympathize with, non-withstanding the fact that a non-crowd approach would be more of help.

I understand this post may be of very limited help, if at all, but who knows, perhaps you may find here more than me.

By the way, RFF respected member Fallisphoto has written a highly valuable post on photo critique in some of our threads. I highly recommend you to PM him and ask him to try to remember which thread it was.

Cheers,
Ruben
 
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ruben said:
By the way, RFF respected member Fallisphoto has written a highly valuable post on photo critique in some of our threads. I highly recommend you to PM him and ask him to try to remember which thread it was.

Cheers,
Ruben
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Thanks! It took some searching, Ruben, but I found it:

The art of the Critique

Most of you have no doubt noticed the section under each piece of artwork in your individual galleries that is set aside for people to post comments. No doubt most of the comments you have received are things like: "Gee, this is good!" or "Very nice work!" and so on. These are comments, not critiques. While these are nice to look at and make you feel all warm and fuzzy, when it comes to helping you develop your technique and helping you to grow as a photographer, they are almost worthless. What is worse, the general effect of most of them can be to encourage complacency. There is a difference between a comment and a critique. Critiques are far more valuable. I'd trade all of my comments for one good critique.

A comment is a general statement of approval or disapproval. "Gee this is so good it makes me want to have your baby! You are a photography God!" is a comment (a somewhat disturbing comment, but a comment nevertheless). It does not mention what the person found admirable about the photo. Similarly, "This sucks. In a perfect society, real photographers would gather together in order to beat you to death." is a comment. It does not say what in particular the viewer found objectionable. Comments leave the artist wondering why the photo is good or bad and, most importantly, they don't pinpoint areas where he needs to develop his or her level of skill. I'd like to stress this, because this last is the most important aspect of a critique. If you don't find something that needs improvement, point it out, and suggest a way to improve it, you have left a worthless comment, not a valuable critique.

Now let's compare a comment to a critique: "I like the general effect, and, in particular, I like the detail in the foliage. However, I noticed that the bright red of the lady's fingernails draws the eye strongly, and distracts the viewer's attention from her face, which I feel should be the focal point of the composition. It seems to me to be a little overexposed, by maybe one f-stop. When photographing a model against a black background, you need to meter on her skin or use a gray card. A meter assumes that all scenes are supposed to be 18% gray and it looks at the whole scene and gives you a reading that will give you the "correct" exposure to achieve this. With this much black in the compositon, the reading will be incorrect. However, most Caucasian skin is pretty close to 18% gray and if you approach the model so that her skin fills the viewfinder, you will get a good meter reading. If your model is black, you can meter on a gray card in similar lighting. The white border is not really working either and I think it makes the photo look flat. This has potential, but isn't quite there and I'd reshoot it." A critique requires a little analysis, and it points out a photo's problem areas. This gives the artist an idea of what areas of composition he or she needs to concentrate on and aids him or her enormously in developing artistic and technical skills. Now for a typical comment: "Good, but not quite there." How does this help?

Now every artist has (or should have) a different style (and maybe a whole different interpretation of art), and so the photographer being critiqued may not agree with you. Nevertheless, the critique is still valuable - even if our hypothetical photographer rejects your opinion utterly - because it allows him or her to see how others perceive the artwork in question. If people are missing the point, the photographer can work on a way to emphasize it a bit more in the next shoot.

All this said, the purpose of a critique is to encourage the development of an artist's skill, not to rip his or her work to shreds. You start with a compliment and point out just a few problem areas, even if you think the work is a disaster and riddled with them. If you mention too much that is wrong, the general effect will be to discourage the artist from creating more work instead of to encourage him or her to create better work. This is what is meant by constructive criticism. If you are not very good about compliments (or can't find anything to compliment), then at the very least start off with something like "No offense, but..." so the artist will know that he or she is not being attacked.

ALL photographers who are at all serious, and who are worthy of being called photographers, will sincerely appreciate critiques. It is worth the effort to supply one and you will often find the favor returned if you go to the trouble. What is more, analysis of other's efforts will be of benefit to you in analyzing your own work.
 
Not sure if necroposting is appreciated, but I cannot help myself not to say "Thanks!" for a splendid groups mentioned above.
I've been signing out one flikr group by one, which were flooded by so-so images. And while googleing for a good moderated groups, I found myself back to RFF!
 
Necroposting... haha! never heard that one before. I like it ;-)

"I Shoot Film" is one very active but sometimes also very silly group. 69k members at the moment. Administered by a certain Larry D. who some of you might know from other forums.
 
I use flickriver.com alot. It lets you search by tag, so it doesnt matter which group its from. You can search "street" or "film" or "Tri-x." I get a lot of good pics that way.
 
anu L ogy said:
I use flickriver.com alot. It lets you search by tag, so it doesnt matter which group its from. You can search "street" or "film" or "Tri-x." I get a lot of good pics that way.
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flickriver is quite nice but you can do the tag-search in the flickr webpage.
 
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