Who else is a bad judge of their photos?

[hepcat]

In my experience that's usually the rule rather than the exception.

"Well, I kinda want it like this, but also like that with a dash of the other thrown in... You know what I mean?" :bang:

And then you say "yes" and give them what you think they want... which may or may not be what they actually had pictured.

I've actually taken to doing a storyboard sketch sometimes to figure out exactly what a client has in mind. It's a lot more clear to both of us that way, and I really do "know what he means."

 

[Richard G]

Most of yours are very good. You have a particular vision. I think the Gallery has great pictures with no gear tag overtones much at all. Sometimes the small thumbnail hides the treasure. And yet, just like finding a gem amongst your own stuff, the Gallery reviewers who choose their weekly picks will often include a photo for which there hasn't been any comment through the week. They've noticed it for the first time, or they have come back to it. The very task of making a selection is a great exercise for the chooser, and the result is a great lesson for anyone looking through the choices of other members, to say nothing of looking at the photographs chosen. Keep posting your babies and your cast offs!

 

[rivercityrocker]

And then you say "yes" and give them what you think they want... which may or may not be what they actually had pictured.

I've actually taken to doing a storyboard sketch sometimes to figure out exactly what a client has in mind. It's a lot more clear to both of us that way, and I really do "know what he means."

I always say yes. Then I come up with a few different concepts and shoot a few of each. Generally I get something that sticks.

 

[Pfreddee]

Me, me, pick me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

With best regards.

Pfreddee(Stephen)

 

[Gary Sandhu]

You would need a gold standard to compare your judgment to. I don't think other people picking their favourite counts.

 

[tempest68]

Are you posting photos you recently took? If yes, that might be a part of what is going on. FWIW, I do agree with Eric Kim on the matter of letting your photos marinate. The concept is that if you try to edit your work soon after taking the image, you may have too much of an emotional attachment or memory of when you took the photo that could influence how you judge it. If you don't look at a photo for several months or even a year before you do your edits, you are likely to be more objective during the process.

 

[jwicaksana]

I find that when I submit photos to an art director / client, they usually pick the ones that I like the least. My favorites sometimes get unused. One mans trash is another mans treasure...I guess?

I have the same experience with my editor. Maybe it's the emotions we feel when we shot that frame. Working for a client usually means there is a time frame, so I feel like I am still attached to the emotions I get when I shot them instead of seeing the actual content of the frame.

 

[russelljtdyer]

Photographer to Barbie Girls

Photographer to Barbie Girls

I'm often frustrated and bothered by how others judge my work and it amazes me what people like. I will see people rave about a photo someone took which is badly composed, filled with trash in the background, out-of-focus, overexposed, etc. Whereas, I will carefully compose a shot, make sure everything is just right and people will show no interest in it. It's not about me, though. I think it's about the subject, or people liking what everyone else likes, or other things along that line.

On my personal web site, there are over eight thousand photographs taken by me. I'm proud of many of them--but not all of them and not even most of them. Many are photos taken while traveling and some were taken before I first started learning seriously about photography. This photograph below is one of those early ones:

In August 2007, I visited my cousins in Sicily for the first time. One of those cousins, Martina was nine years old then. She had a collection of Barbie dolls and wanted to show them to me. She wanted me to photograph them to show my daughter in the U.S., who is only a few years older. I took the picture with a Sony point-and-shoot camera set on automatic mode since I had no idea how to use it.

This photograph has been on my web site for 6 years and 4 months. Despite having some very well done photographs on my site and photos of interesting places and subjects, this badly exposed, poorly focused photo of Martina's Barbies is by far the most popular photograph on my site. It has been viewed 41,113 times--I keep track of all of the activity on my site. That's 541 times a month, 21 times a day for over six years. There has never been a day in which any other photograph has been viewed more than this photo; it's always the most popular photo of the day on my site.

So, if I want to be a famous and successful photographer, maybe I should become a photographer to Barbie girls. I certainly won't do well based on photos that I like or subjects I find interesting.

 

[OurManInTangier]

I seem to specialise in clients with terminally vague briefs, sometimes so vague I just get told "ooh, we thought you'd just do your thing." So helpful 🙂

As far as my personal pictures go I find I'm a pretty harsh editor but not because I worry about what others may or may not like. Though the 'marinating pictures' holds some truth for me even if it's less that I store them away for a few weeks/months and rather more that I initially dismissed them and stumbled over them later and saw something of interest.

When I had a gallery presence here at RFF there was a shot of a glass building with a gathering storm reflected that accrued sixteen pages of positive comments and many many views. I never quite understood its popularity as I personally didn't rate it that highly. Another shot which I loved and felt very lucky to get received eight comments and hardly any views over about five years of sitting in the gallery and often popping up on the frontpage Random Gallery section. As others have mentioned, this happens almost daily with work. So unless someones paying I wouldn't pay too much attention to what others like or dislike - that way lies wasted time trying to please others and muddying your own processes...IMO 🙂

 

[Roger Hicks]

I always say yes. Then I come up with a few different concepts and shoot a few of each. Generally I get something that sticks.

This is another version of something I learned when I first started work as an assistant.

1 Always stick to the brief and follow the scamp slavishly

2 Then shoot it your way as well. This is the one they often end up using.

Another thing I learned: NEVER give an art director a square tranny or there's a very good chance that he/she/it will crop it portrait when it's supposed to be landscape and vice versa. This is why I switched from Hasselblad to 6x7 cm.

Cheers,

R.

 

[David Hughes]

Hi,

I don't think good or bad come into it or are definable. It's the subject they look at, like the Barbie dolls. They don't see anything else.

Moral; when selling a camera on ebay show a sample picture taken with it of a car, steam engine etc. And that's only because they won't allow nudes...

Regards, David

 

[jschrader]

I do not need to sell my photos, so I try to make photos I like myself.
However, often others do not find my favorites special.

 

[jschrader]

I'm often frustrated and bothered by how others judge my work and it amazes me what people like. I will see people rave about a photo someone took which is badly composed, filled with trash in the background, out-of-focus, overexposed, etc. Whereas, I will carefully compose a shot, make sure everything is just right and people will show no interest in it. It's not about me, though. I think it's about the subject, or people liking what everyone else likes, or other things along that line.

On my personal web site, there are over eight thousand photographs taken by me. I'm proud of many of them--but not all of them and not even most of them. Many are photos taken while traveling and some were taken before I first started learning seriously about photography. This photograph below is one of those early ones:

In August 2007, I visited my cousins in Sicily for the first time. One of those cousins, Martina was nine years old then. She had a collection of Barbie dolls and wanted to show them to me. She wanted me to photograph them to show my daughter in the U.S., who is only a few years older. I took the picture with a Sony point-and-shoot camera set on automatic mode since I had no idea how to use it.

This photograph has been on my web site for 6 years and 4 months. Despite having some very well done photographs on my site and photos of interesting places and subjects, this badly exposed, poorly focused photo of Martina's Barbies is by far the most popular photograph on my site. It has been viewed 41,113 times--I keep track of all of the activity on my site. That's 541 times a month, 21 times a day for over six years. There has never been a day in which any other photograph has been viewed more than this photo; it's always the most popular photo of the day on my site.

So, if I want to be a famous and successful photographer, maybe I should become a photographer to Barbie girls. I certainly won't do well based on photos that I like or subjects I find interesting.

that is really crazy. A good warning for everybody not to seek applause
I have not see your site but I am sure you made better shots 😉

 

[Sparrow]

This is another version of something I learned when I first started work as an assistant.

1 Always stick to the brief and follow the scamp slavishly

2 Then shoot it your way as well. This is the one they often end up using.

Another thing I learned: NEVER give an art director a square tranny or there's a very good chance that he/she/it will crop it portrait when it's supposed to be landscape and vice versa. This is why I switched from Hasselblad to 6x7 cm.

Cheers,

R.

... the golden-rule never give the client a choice ... they will in all circumstances pick the wrong one

 

[barnwulf]

My photographs are different than most of the others on rff since don't photograph traditional subjects. I shoot to please myself and not others so much, but I don’t deny that I like to have positive comments from others. I am not conscious that I am trying to please others. I don’t expect that my photographs will attract a lot of attention because of the subject matter that I choose, but since I have been shooting for 50 years I do have a sense of which ones might get some comments and which may not. I rarely upload images that I have taken that day and have found that looking at them for several days or a week, I am able to weed out the weaker images. If I find a photograph still interesting to look at after a week I usually conclude that it’s probably a pretty good photo. Sometimes I am wrong. - jim

 

[philcycles]

I am always surprised by what people like.
I picked some shots for a gallery owner who then asked for everything I had and picked some I would NEVER have chosen.
Go figure

 

[Finglas]

People who view my actual photos NEVER like what I like!!
What I think it good, or technically competent or even "arty" or indeed
just my favourites - that I took - have never in 33 years met with same view from family, friends or colleagues. There is absolutely no accounting for taste, never will be!

So while I can sometimes judge my photos, everyone else disagrees....

I have no scanner to post any prints or slides from my 33 years taking photos
I really am a luddite when it comes to this new fangled "sharing online" thingamajig..

 

[mdarnton]

Angelog, I think you are doing something special in your work that you have perhaps not yet realized. What I see is that you have a really good feeling for synergy in composition--the kind of composition you have to do in the camera, that considers everything in the photo, as opposed to the kind of academic composition that trying to make something that wasn't there by cropping after the fact gives, which cannot ever be synergistic except by accident.

 

[borge]

I am curious if anyone else has this same problem: I post a lot of pictures in the gallery mainly to learn from the wonderful feedback in this forum. I never seem to get any notice to my personal favorites but I'm always blind-sided by lots of notice to photos I was reluctant to post!

How do you edit and select your shots?
I have found that waiting 1-3 months before even considering the shots after I took them to be a very good practice.

The worst thing I can do is go out, take a few shots, go back home and import my shots right away and start editing and post some stuff online.

You need to view your images more objectively. And that's impossible to do a few hours or days after you took the picture.

Treat digital as it was film. Import the files (and do a backup), tag them, rate them and sort them, but don't evaluate them and start processing and editing them, and especially don't post them online! Wait at least a couple of weeks, preferably a month, and if you are patient enough - even more!

Photographers are usually emotional people. And when we feel that we have made a picture that is just SO GREAT it doesn't mean that it actually is a great picture. But what makes it great to you is because you was there while the entire thing happened in front of your face. You know the complete story. You associate your emotions with the image. Your viewers online will only see the picture for what it is however. The waiting game gets you out of the emotional state you were in while you took the picture and forces you to look at your work with fresh eyes.

 

[jhalmu]

If you don't have young woman to shoot toward sun, shoot water with a dock slowspeed. And enjoy likes (in flickr). Be bored.