spend time to critique your own photos to improve

Because of my non-photography (or art) related full time job, the amount of time I can take pictures is very limited. So, how have I been improving my photography? One major way is by critiquing my own photos. There is no need for expensive gears, water repelling outfits, nice locations, gold hour waiting, or once in a life time trips. All I needed is my photo processing software and maybe 30 minutes (hopefully a few times a week).

For every photos in my library, I compare 2 photos and pick one. After I pick the better half, I would do it again to pick the better 4th, and better 8th, and maybe even better 16th. This is a time consuming process and that is the point. May professional photographers could accumulate 10s of thousands of photos every month. They know their keepers before the photos were even downloaded for post processing because they probably can’t realistically spend much time on each photo. I, on the other hand, takes less than 10 thousands a year. I can afford to spend some time on each one of them.

Toward the beginning of this process, I would be looking at lots of photos, but I often compare 2 very similar photos: a person was positioned (perhaps from walking) in 2 places in the same scenery? or 2 different cloud formations in the same scenery? Very quickly, I develop my eyes to appreciate better photos. The person positioned in a less interesting spot in the scenery made a better photo. On the other hand, the cloud formations that drew our eyes to the interesting spot in the scenery made a better photo. This information will help me when I am out taking pictures again next time. I will wait for that extra second for the person to move to the right spot before I hit the shutter.

Toward the end of this process, there would be significantly less photos to compare but they would be very different. This is harder because I have to think deeper about each photo. Was there a message in one but not the other? Have I taken a similar photo before and is this one better? What was my intention and which photo reflected my intention better? Did I like one better just because I tried harder to make that one?

While this could be very time consuming, you can do this in batches. I often do about 100 photos per session. I hope you give this a try as well.