1. grab shots, get the picture before it gets away.
2. studied shots, get the best picture you can.
In case 1, other angles, etc. are impossible by the very nature of the shot. What you get either works for the purpose, or it doesn't
In case 2, I have explored the possible angles, and framings throughly and shoot the ones I think work. They don't always, but that is another matter.
In either case telling me I should have done it differently is a waste of my time. Now if someone learning is asking, that usually is a different matter. Mostly in that case I figure they are really asking about my thinking when I made the photo. If I am not feeling grumpy just then, I will usually answer.
I can not think of when I looked at a good picture and thought, "How could I make that better"? I have looked at thousands of good pictures and thought, "How did he do that"? Then analyzing it closely until I could see how it was lit, why it was framed that way, and what it was saying. Then pondering that information until I had some understanding of why it worked. The final step is going out and using the information from the pondering step to verify that I was correct, and that I could do it when I chose to. At that point I had a new skill.
"I would have moved to the right, and taken a vertical", is just an ego induced comment (I am better than you). OTOH, "If you had reduced the flash a stop, the face would not be washed out" is a helpful hint to a novice. If the shot was done by a person who knew that, it was probably a category 1 photo and he/she is well aware of that.
Then there are snapshots, which by their very nature have high emotional content for the photographer. If you criticize them you are criticizing what the photog sees in them, and thus him, or his (not a way to make friends). Unfortunately, snapshooters rarely understand that to someone who is not emotionally involved the snaps are often meaningless. So really the only thing you can safely say is, "Very nice".
I guess, in the end, how you feel about this matter depends on whether you work internally like I do, or externally and like to bounce ideas off of others. Which means, I guess, that I have come to terms with the concept, as it applies to the list. For some of you it is great. For myself and other internalizers all we really want to know is "do you get it", "does the picture say to you what we meant it to say"? In other words, the psychological aspects of the photo.
For example: The photo of the field with the building in the dead center, and the tree at the upper right did not work for me, because it gave conflicting feelings. The storm clouds and the very off centered tree gave a very dynamic feel to the photo. The centered building and cold looking static field gave a placid, but shivery feel. Those two conflicting aspects were in no way resolved, so I don't know what the photo means. Of course there is the possibility that that is what the photographer (Butch Black, IIRC) was trying to do. But for that to be successful, I think there needed to be a clue as to which way things were moving, and there wasn't. Possibly, if the tree was not there in the corner, some of this would be resolved by giving the dynamic aspect less weight; or if the building was not dead center thereby reducing the static effect. As it is, like Frank said in his comments about it, it makes me feel uncomfortable. However, it obviously has impact or I would not remember it so well. The shot was technically good.
Without a lot more information than I have, I feel there is nothing more I could say about the photo that is meaningful. Which is my point, a critique to be meaningful has to be about the photo being critiqued. Yes, I said something that could be interpreted as changes, but I was actually talking about the effect of something in the photo, that is different than telling the photographer to change it. Hopefully, after reading the above, he will have some idea of how what he was trying to do worked. It may have been perfect, for all I know, he might have been trying for just that ambiguality that bothers me.
--
William Robb wrote:
While I understand where he is coming from, I disagree. If you are going to discuss something, then what is wrong with discussing all the possibilities? If we are going to leave out the other potential angles of view, then why not leave out such mundane things as cropping, or contrast or any other image control. After all, the picture is whats there.
-- graywolf http://graywolfphoto.com
"You might as well accept people as they are, you are not going to be able to change them anyway."
