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DPChallenge Forums >> Challenge Results >> How does MY voting stack up?
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 03/24/2004 09:23:37 AM · #1
For me, this site provides TWO goals. One, of course, is to improve my photographic abilities - this being done by forcing me to meet a given challenge, and to try to improve my scores over time. But the second goal is to improve my eye for what constitutes "good" photography ( or, as some might argue, "popular" photography ). To judge whether I am meeting my first goal is easy - all I have to do is enter challenges and see what kind of scoring my photos receive. To judge whether I am meeting my second goal is also easy, but actually takes more time - I compare MY vote to the average that each photo received to see if I voted way high, somewhat high, right on, somewhat low, or way low. By studying those photos where I was way high or way low I try to see if I can determine what I saw that others didn't, or didn't see that others did. Hopefully, over time, that will help to improve my photography as well.

I'm just curious if others do, or feel the same?

Ron
 03/24/2004 09:33:43 AM · #2
When you compare your votes to others here, it doesn't mean a lot, except that you will train yourself to vote like the rest of the group.

I think the best way to improve your photography is to take time and really analyze the photos you are looking at. Tear them apart, first list the "hits" of the photo, then the "misses", and then what you think could have been done to improve it. It can be time consuming, so you could do this in your head, though a written critique would be even better. Perhaps you could join the critique club and contribute while you learn.

However, one thing I think is missing still from that as a learning experience. There's really no feedback here for your critiques. On the other hand, if you can do your critiques in a context where you can have a discussion with other photographers, then you go even a step further and learn more. Perhaps this needs to be a focus of one of the forums here?

Now, what would be another step, which would be even better of a learning experience (and one I'd love to personally do), is to start doing the same with some "famous" photographs and have a discussion group about it. So you could really compare your analysis with others. I've never belonged to a photo club, but that's one place this might already be happening. Or again, it would be nice to have a forum here devoted to really analyzing photos and discussing them!

03/24/2004 09:40:55 AM · #3
Originally posted by nshapiro:
When you compare your votes to others here, it doesn't mean a lot, except that you will train yourself to vote like the rest of the group.

I think the best way to improve your photography is to take time and really analyze the photos you are looking at. Tear them apart, first list the "hits" of the photo, then the "misses", and then what you think could have been done to improve it. It can be time consuming, so you could do this in your head, though a written critique would be even better. Perhaps you could join the critique club and contribute while you learn.

However, one thing I think is missing still from that as a learning experience. There's really no feedback here for your critiques. On the other hand, if you can do your critiques in a context where you can have a discussion with other photographers, then you go even a step further and learn more. Perhaps this needs to be a focus of one of the forums here?

Now, what would be another step, which would be even better of a learning experience (and one I'd love to personally do), is to start doing the same with some "famous" photographs and have a discussion group about it. So you could really compare your analysis with others. I've never belonged to a photo club, but that's one place this might already be happening. Or again, it would be nice to have a forum here devoted to really analyzing photos and discussing them!


I thought that the "Individual Photos" forum was there to encourage that...at least for our own photos.
03/24/2004 09:57:11 AM · #4
Originally posted by nshapiro:
When you compare your votes to others here, it doesn't mean a lot, except that you will train yourself to vote like the rest of the group.

I think you missed part of my point. I'm certainly not trying to train myself to vote like the rest of the group. I don't analyze those photos where I'm somewhat different, only those where I'm way high or low. Even then, if I can justify ( in my own mind ) why I totally disagree with the "average", I don't try to adjust my thinking. But there are those occasions where I can see that I needed to look deeper than I did, or to NOT look as deep as I did.

I agree with you that critique feedback would go a long way in achieving my second goal. But lacking that small group discussion, I'm trying to view the group average as that critique ( given that it doesn't provide the discussion aspects ).

Ron
 03/24/2004 12:24:59 PM · #5
I really like the idea of some kind of group discussion on the critiques associated with individual photographs and have been thinking of that for some time. I think the main way to learn about the esthetics of photography and devoloping an "eye" is through comments/critiques (at least it's been that way for me) but I"ve also come to realize that with my limited experience in photography (just a couple of years) that I need to be able to see how others with alot more experience view and critique photographs. This also applies to being able to hear what the photographer has to say about his/her photo.

I don't think there is any substitute for a teacher, and while that was started here some months ago through a mentor program, I think its benefits are limited to just a few. One way this site could expedite some kind of discussion on photographs and comments is to institute comments on comments...in other words have the capacity for the photographer and commenter to enter additional comments right under the previous comment instead of at the top of the comment list of a photograph page. In addition, as new comments are added maybe they can be noted in some kind of master page that people can refer to to see what's been added...like with the forums...when a new comment in a thread is added it goes to the top of the forums list.

Also, I would very much like to have group chats with special guest speakers, either from DPC members or other booked guests. Well known photographers could be gotten to hold group chats to discuss different topics. (I know this may take some additional monies and we'd have to figure out how to do that.)

I think this should be encouraged to be able to gain the full benefits and potential of this site
Sorry about the longwindedness.
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