How Do You Take Suggestions About Your Art?

Dali and Nirvana - 111909

Photo by Karl

One of the blessings and challenges of being in a photography class is the critique session. Every Wednesday, we put up our photo assignments on a big cork board under gallery lights. They are divided into the various assigned genres. We take a few minutes to get close and look at them and then sit down. We then begin the critique.

Last night, I presented photos of a veteran, painting with light, and experimental ideas. My photo that I was most excited was the experimental image of Candace Nirvana with a Salvador Dali painting projected onto her (see below). Due to reasons I can only guess about, that photo was the first chosen for critique.

Dali and Nirvana 1
Photo by Karl

My instructor pushes us to seriously critique photos. He discourages us from giving useless comments like, "I like it." or "It's fine." We need to discuss what works and doesn't work in the photo. He doesn't want the photographer to share any back story, we just judge the image by what is in front of us.

I've found three common areas of criticism, the quality of composition and exposure, the quality of the message and intent, the mixture of all of these for creating a finished or refined photo.

As you can imagine with a class of twenty-eight students, some are silent, some never shut up, and most are in between on sharing their impressions. You also get tons of praise and suggestions. One of my challenges is filtering the suggestions for my growth.

All of us have preferences on content, technique, and other elements. I appreciate hearing how others would have accentuated or minimized elements, cropped differently, and other changes. I also appreciate how others interpret my image, or tell me how it is doing nothing for them. Some have suggestions on tangent ideas based on my images. These are tough for me to absorb.

The words I cringe hearing are , "You know what you should do, you should... " Sometimes they have a really good suggestion. Most of the time, they are sharing their own photographic desires and visions that are neither areas that I want to do, or I even understand. One suggestion was "You should try projecting the same image onto nude men and women of various ages, shapes, and colors to celebrate their beauty. " I just nodded and listened. In my mind I thought about it and quickly realized, "That is not why I picked that image to project on this certain model. I wanted Candace in these photos because of her shape, skin color, poses, attitude, and many other intangible qualities.

When I hear these suggestions, I become offended because I wonder if they even appreciated what I created. It seems they instantly find ways to improve them. Did they even look at them beyond the first impression?

As I heard that suggestion and thought about it last night, I had a small realization. My photo may have been a spring board for them. I often see some photo and instantly have a big idea of where I want to go with that concept. The difference though is that I realize it is my inspiration, not necessarily a suggestion of where they should go with their art. My inspiration stemming from their art is a springboard into a new avenue of exploration.

Painting With Light - Mollee
Photo by Karl

After we critiqued all the work, I put my photos into the "turn-in" bin and gathered my stuff. The photographer who made the suggestion approached me and asked about the technique of using an LCD projector to do this type of photography. I told him about my experience and I hope he goes with his ideas. Maybe my photo may be a springboard for him to create some great art.

So, I guess I need to accept criticism and ideas for my art while recognizing when the shared information is more about their art. If my art is inspiration for somebody else, that is pretty good as well.