Originally posted by mhsp1948 I have made some post trying to get into the Exclusive Gallery and found out just how poor my photography is and then this last time was told the following. "Have you SEEN the quality of the shots in the gallery? Do you really think ANY of these are even close? Please stop. You are driving everybody NUTS and are wasting our time.This is a mediocre snapshot with really, really bad purple fringing sun the tree, that has a nice starburst because you used a very nice lens. Aside from that, well, I'll try not to be rude at this point. Please stop submitting until you understand where the standard is."
Guess I am actually worse than I thought when it comes to my photos and I see that now. So, I won't be posting in the Exclusive Gallery anymore. I guess it is time to own that I am not that good. I will have to take some real time to evaluate my work. The truth hurts sometimes, but it can be good in the long run. Hope to get better.
I have no images in the gallery, don't feel bad. ( I have had images selected as covers for facebook groups and forums, have had images with 600,000 views on image hosting sites, and over 750 likes on facebook.)
I do have images here...
https://pentaxphotogallery.com/manage/your-photo-gallery/
The difference here is my images are voted on by hundreds of users. Not a couple of opinionated critics.
When I used to sell my images at craft shows, I used to think 1 in 10 attendees come into my booth. 1 of those buy something. So I'm selling to maybe 1 in 100. Yet I did very well. Just because one of the critics for the Forum gallery didn't like your work doesn't mean it isn't good work by some else's criteria. Slough it off. It means next to nothing. If you enjoy it, that's all that matters. I've sold images I couldn't get into the exclusive gallery, so what exactly does that mean? What some people will pay for, others won't post for free.
The Gallery tends to emphasize technical excellence over artistic excellence.Look at the worlds most famous photographs. An awful to of them wouldn't get into the gallery based on some niggling technical deficiency.
I remember when one guy bought a Gallery reject he said, "this image has a real spiritual quality to it, I've never seen in a photograph, maybe in some paintings." The Gallery doesn't evaluate "spiritual qualities" The funny thing, is I thought the same thing about the photo. I thought, "this is like one of those oil paintings you see in museums." That guy guy paid $350 for a 30x20 canvas, because he got it. The forum experts turned it down because they didn't.
Fluff, I say, fluff.
I've seen images with purple fringing in Outdoor Photographer, so, you can take your cue from an actual working editor who gets paid for doing what he does, or a bunch of hyper critical amateurs. It amazes me how some guys just lock into a preset, like "the horizon has to be level" , "the colour balance has too be based on neutral gray" or "there can't be any purple fringing" and are so locked into these ideologies they can't see the picture.
I stopped submitting when I started feeling sad because of the lack of understanding of photography revealed by the comments of the judges. Are those really people you want to use to evaluate your work? You don't wan't criticism from those who don't understand your work, you want suggestions from those who get it.
I've entered competitions judged by photographers where the winner was the guy who produced images most like the style of one of the judges won. The whole competion ended up being like a validation of the way one of the judges shot." At least those competitions had valuable prizes. I hate to get insulted for nothing.
Enjoy your pictures when you get one you like, and just take it as given, if you like it, there's probably thousands of others who'd like i t if they saw it. Maybe not the kind of people who are judges for the Forum Gallery, but real people.
Back when I was teaching, evaluating a hundred photographs a week, a comment like that could have gotten me fired. There are disadvantages to appointing untrained people with unknown skillsets to positions where they judge the work of others.
Take these things with a grain of salt. Keep shooting, enjoy what you do.
Last edited by normhead; 02-22-2020 at 11:47 AM.