Critiques

I'm traveling at the moment with limited ability to participate here this week. I'm also a long-term member of the C&C group that Roel and Minniev are referring to. The weekly discipline of submitting a photo, considering the opinions of others and honing my own analytical skills has been invaluable.
Getting the "pitch" of discussions right is vital. Especially with newer participants and those just beginning their photographic journey, honesty and encouragement is important but it must be honest and it must be analytical. "Great photo. That's the cutest cat." is not analytical.
The best assett is a group of people who are experienced in doing this because they can set a, for want of a better word,"tone". The format of the forum is critical. The threaded view format at the previous site worked well in making discussions easy to follow and link to the image. It is going to take some time to get a new satisfactory format in place but the outcomes are worth it.

As someone who always wants to learn I would be interested in such a forum. Many years ago on another forum, long closed, there was a 'tone' of helpful support. Yes there were comments of admiration when amazing images turned up, but also comments about balance, removing distracting elements, and why didn't you move to the left were also common. Individual posters indicated if they were happy for C&C or not, also if they were happy for others to work on their images. It was reasonably small so perhaps that contributed to the sense of trust and respect that existed. I learnt a lot, although I'm very aware that I could learn much more.

David

Hi David,
Nice to hear from you.
Our current format is here: www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66974459
That's the most recent of 779 editions (15 years exactly on April 1 2023)

I will start a similar exercize tomorrow morning (Brussels time) in the Oly SLR Talk section of this new forum site.
Why Oly? Because that is what we are used to and will keep going until we can improve.
But the whole exercize is totally non-brand specific.
Please join us.

Roel

I think maybe some basic guidance for a critique forum would be helpful. The black and white forum was essentially a critique forum with no actual critique, just a procession of images with likes, and one particular individual who consistently just posted 'I like it', regardless of how good or bad an image was. I made the mistake of pointing out how an image could be improved and it didn't go down well, despite the comment being fair and respectful, I didn't bother again after that. Ego's are apparently extremely fragile in the DPR world. It shouldn't be difficult, if you're asking for critique that doesn't necessarily mean gushing praise for a mediocre shot, as long as the comments are respectful and valid (which admittedly is sometimes subjective) then people should be able to discuss critique in a civil manner.

Feel better soon!

There is absolutely no reason to be sorry for any delays. Clearly there is a lot of work to be done on this site and no hurry in adding a new forum at this time.
Again, best wishes for a speedy recover.

Sorry you're sick Alan, I know from recent experience that even "mild covid" is quite unpleasant.

When you get back 'round to thinking on this dilemma, you might want to take a look at our first run of this long-running critique thread over here. It started yesterday and will run for a week. You can size up our strengths and challenges. dprevived.com/t/wed-cc-no-theme-no-brand-thread-780-revived-001-on-2023-04-05/1152/. About half the participants thus far are known to us from DPR and the others somehow found us here. As you will see, there is no discussion of gear, no one cares, it's just about images.

We are in no rush.