ah well, lesson learned

So I'm not even sure how many people saw my last post - about my photo on the popphoto website, but I banished it to cyberspace. Apparently the whole critique-ing section of that blog is a joke - I say joke, as in these 'contributing bloggers' probably have no more credentials than I to be offering advice in the world of photography. I guess I was just too caught up in the fact that I had a good review - but after finding out it basically means next to nothing, there's no point in sharing it with the world.

Photography is subjective, not objective - and while some of the reviewers practiced that, most did not (and neither did a lot of the people taking the time to make their comments). And upon finding out there was a comments section below the posts (which I did not know until KT pointed it out, because I can't read) I checked them out. Brought the glee down a notch...or 10. I couldn't tell if these people just really disliked my photo, or had been ripped apart themselves by one of the blogger's critiques and couldn't understand why a "pretty picture of an ugly flower" got any praise. While I did agree with some of the comment-ers points on either the photo itself (the tip of the petal cut off at the bottom) or the blogger's critique (I also felt she lightened it a little too much), I thought it was a pretty good capture. It's a macro shot of a flower, it is what it is, it's not some picture of some starving children in Africa getting their first meal after 3 months. But again, going back to my earlier statement - unless you're talking about technical fixes like shutter speed, aperture, DOF etc - all you're going to have is a bunch of opinions...so...take it with a grain of salt?

I was just interested to see what more experienced people would have to say about a photo I snapped on vacation - it's not like it was hand-picked for the cover of National Geographic. And in looking at the comments of the other photos picked for a critique it seems pretty similar across the board - if the photo was given a high rating, people questioned why - if the photo was given a low rating, people questioned why. So thanks to those for thinking it was a 'nice' photo and offering some constructive criticism - and no, I do not know the person who critiqued my photo personally as according to one person, there's no other reason there'd be "such praise for such an ordinary photo" - maybe she just likes flowers? But I did agree with his/her last statement - "Your critiques are no more than your opinion and your opinion is no better than mine."

In conclusion, only you can decide if your photo is worthy of a desktop background. In the meantime, I'm going to keep on taking pictures of ordinary things.