Teresa Pilcher“The Truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable”. -Unknown
Many professional photographers pay a Mentor thousands of dollars each year to hear honest critique of their work. It is a painful process no doubt and difficult to have your faults pointed out to you. So why is critique so important and why is worth so much??
From my experience, it is the quickest way to grow and move forward. Of course it is alway great to hear that people love your work, but what about those images that don’t work. Crickets is all you will hear above the silence! The fact is, we have more to learn more from our failures then our successes.
This image conveys the story through the hands of our subjects, it is evident that the young girl wants to go. It may be an instinct passed down from our hunter gatherer days but our eye is firstly drawn to hands and faces, and often in that order. Her face is hidden which indicates she is shy. Our eye is also drawn to written words on the chalkboard and the books, “A Dog or perhaps a Cat” adds to the interest of this story and places us outside a bookstore. The reflections of the street in this image, also adds an extra dimension.
When I first joined the Arcanum I thought my images were great even though I knew they were technically imperfect, but I was emotionally attached to these images. I saw only their potential so their flaws were hidden from me. I would have defended them with my life, but then the cold hard truth sinks in. Our choice is to learn our weaknesses and blind spots so that we can then move forward and progress. So in the Arcanum we post images in our cohorts and learn to critique each others work. At first it is a difficult process when we learn others don’t love our images as much as we do. But then there is a light bulb moment…
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