The Art of Criticism

Today I took a leap…not a flying leap, a leap of faith. Faith in myself and my art. I submitted one of my pictures to be critiqued. I use to do this often and then sort of fell off the wagon.  Part of the reason was because the critiques were being based on their personal style and not the overall ascetics of the picture. The other reason was because some of the places I was going got caught up in a lot of drama. I can understand some of the drama. Here you are putting your art out there and wearing your heart on your sleeve and then someone comes and rips it apart. Luckily, this never happened to me (probably because I played it safe) but I have seen a few places run off some new talent and I would feel awful for those people. 

So, I joined this new forum called Chic Critique. They just recently started the forum which is cool because you can learn and grow with the site. They also have a very unique way that everyone critiques each other. They call it the Sandwich Method. This means that when you are critiquing others, or they are critiquing you, that they first say something positive about the image, and then say what you can improve on or constructive criticism followed by another positive comment.  I like this because this cushions the ego a bit but it keeps away the photogs that would rip another photog a new one over his/her picture. 

I am happy to say that I did get some very positive feedback on my picture and she was super sweet about all of it. It reminds me of what Jasmine Star says to think about when being critiqued. She says to think about three things before you take in any criticism: 1. is the criticism constructive? 2: Is the source trustworthy? 3: Is the intent to help and not harm? If you get a yes from all three of those then take the constructive criticism in and learn and grow from it. In Jasmine’s case she was blowing out her skies. (I do this all of the time too). She says in her new magazine Exposed that she has improved on it some but she still does it and she is okay with that.  

After your work is out there to be picked apart it can be scary but it is a necessary part of improving your art. Not to mention, you will learn new tricks and probably make some new friends, and that is never a bad thing.