Glenn wrote:
> I recieved a harsh criticism on my submission to the most recent
> PUG. Oh, it was politely phrased, but it was still harsh. You know
> what? I'd still like to see the PUG commentaries continue....
Hi Glenn,
I couldn't agree more. I'd also like to see the commentaries continue. But
in terms of what constitutes a harsh review, perhaps we need a little
perspective here in order to calibrate our "harshness" scale. I recall from
a few months ago that several folks were getting comments off-list from
someone with the e-mail account name of Versal Cross. Some of these
comments were pretty terse and a bit over-the-top, and that's putting it
mildly. This fellow (?) had sent me comments off-list on a couple of my
submissions: one month the comment was pretty direct and pretty useful, but
the following month, the comment was something like, "The astronomy lesson
does not rescue an otherwise dull photo." Well, you certainly can't
complain about that comment not being direct! Could you call it harsh?
Maybe. Might even say "crucified on the Versal Cross". :-) But could you
call it useful? At first I didn't think it was useful at all, especially
since I had gotten a lot of additional comments off-list asking me about
some of the technical details of setting up a shot like that particular one.
(Turns out it's not all that hard.) But I guess in retrospect, even this
terse and unfavorable comment was actually useful. When I'm trying to
compose images of night sky scenes now, I often ask myself, "What could I do
to a shot like this in order to convey to even a viewer like VC a sense of
what I see when I look up at the night sky?" So maybe those terse, harsh,
information-lacking comments are useful for something after all -- if for no
other reason than simply to keep me on my toes?
Bill Peifer
Rochester, NY
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