Title • feeling blue

I thought I'd pick up on a couple of the comments from yesterday this evening, specifically, this one from tobias:

"I feel purely through observing the images that you happened upon the the recent two and thought 'they'll do'.

And this one from miklos:

"All I was saying is that people should not be afraid to comment negatively. And they are. Every photoblog is like that. You get an overwhelming amount of 'great photo' comments and none that say 'I don't like this shot'."

First, there's some truth in what tobias says, I do look through the shots I've taken and sometimes my response is akin to 'they'll do'. But, and this is important, chromasia is a daily venture – I aim to put up something every day, regardless. And sometimes that means that I put up stuff that isn't as good as other stuff (for want of a better way of putting it). And as far as I'm concerned that's no big deal: I make the best of what I have on a given day. In an ideal world – where it didn't rain, I didn't have too much to do at work, the kids didn't get sick, the dog didn't need a walk, and all the other thousand and one things that make up a life didn't get in the way – I'd have time to take better photographs. But the bottom-line is that I don't always have that luxury.

As for negative comments: that's a bit more difficult. Imagine you meet an old friend that you haven't seen for years, and he or she recently got married. You're introduced to their spouse, and you chat a while. After a few minutes the spouse heads off to talk to someone else leaving you to catch up with your friend. At which point you say:

"You have a beautiful wife/adorable husband (delete as appropriate)".

... and nobody bats an eyelid.

Or you say:

"Jeez, your new wife/husband really sucks!"

At which point mouths fall open, a hush falls over the room, and your friend marvels at your lack of social graces ;-)

I think "great photo" is like the former and "I don't like this shot" is not entirely dissimilar to the latter. Neither benefit me as a photographer – they don't improve my technique, push me forward, make me think about the shot in a way that I hadn't done previously – but the former does serve a positive social function (it's a nice, affirmatory sort of thing to say) while the latter is just a downer.

"I think you could improve this shot by ..." is great, as is "I don't think this works because ...", but "I don't like this", or "this is crap", is, well, crap ;-)

So, to sum up, I'm with miklos on this one. People shouldn't be afraid to leave critical comments, but I'd much prefer constructive criticism to simple negativity.

Anyway, enough of that, tell me what you think of this one. It's one of about ten long exposures that I took yesterday evening and is the best of the bunch. About half the others looked as though they were shot in daylight (and hence aren't very interesting), two or three were too badly underexposed to use, and the rest were just crap.