I’ve been thinking about how we judge our work, and how we let the judgments of others cloud our own. And whether that is good or bad or somewhere in between.
The topic is on my mind this week because of a picture of some ferns I took on a recent walk through the redwoods at Samuel P. Taylor State Park. Not a whole lot was happening photographically, but it was still nice to get out from behind the computer and wander among the trees. I was not taking a lot of pictures, and those that I did make were more forced than organic. I was shooting round pegs while looking for square holes.
I have been shooting a lot of fallen leaves lately, so my eyes were focused on the ground. But I kept noticing ferns alongside the trail, their bright green leaves adorned with glistening morning dew catching the corner of my eye. Towards the end of the walk I came upon a small stand of ferns growing on a hill and stopped to take a closer look. I was drawn to the curving lines of one of the larger plants, and began exploring different angles to see what kind of composition I could make of it.
When I got back home, I focused in on one of the images that I seemed to like. I gravitated towards the frames I had shot stopped down, where the deep depth of field created a more layered effect to the image. But the tradeoff was that all that detail made the image much busier than those frames shot with a shallow depth of field, so I worked to adjust the contrast and shadows to provide more definition to the uppermost fern. A little burning of the lower leaves over here, a bit of texture up there, and a slight vignette to bring attention to the center. I kept working it, eventually converting it to black and white, and finally ending up with something I started to really like.
Eventually I kind of fell in love with it. I thought it was one of the better images I had taken last month, so I polished it up and submitted it to a couple low-stake competitions, one hosted by my local camera club and another by an online community that I was active in years ago and still check in with occasionally. There is always a bit of trepidation when you press the “submit” button, willingly putting yourself out there to be examined, critiqued and judged. But there is also excitement in showing your work, in putting something beautiful you made out there for others to see and (hopefully) enjoy.
Then, of course, reality hits. In both competitions, the image was met with … a big yawn. The camera club judge had nice things to say but awarded me no prize. The online club decided the image was worth about a 5 – nothing remarkably good or bad to say about it. What? How could that be? Philistines! How can you not appreciate the true beauty of my art! Oh, the horror. (I hope you can see the tongue planted firmly in my cheek.)
Competitive art is a strange beast, but that’s a topic for another day. As I said, this week my mind has been on how the judgments of others affected my own. Because as I watched the online votes pile up and listened to the camera club judge’s verdict, I felt my own appreciation of the image start to wane. I began to substitute their judgment for my own. And I started to second guess myself. Maybe the color version was better. Maybe I’d worked it too hard in post. Maybe the image wasn’t that great to begin with. Maybe I just don’t understand what makes a good photograph.
All feedback is precious, so long as it is honest. Whether good or bad, it allows us to see our work through someone else’s eyes. And if we can put ourselves in that viewer’s mindset, we have an opportunity to see past our own blindness, to free ourselves of ego, to re-examine and perhaps improve our work. The better the critique, the easier it is to put yourself in the mind of the critic. But ultimately, the work is ours. Any critique, good or bad, must be tempered by our own vision. To avoid falling into the trap of creating work designed only to speak to someone else.
We need, in short, to trust our self. For me, that is the most difficult part. While I have no problem rejecting a compliment on an image I didn’t think was all that special (silently, of course), I find it very hard to reject a negative critique of an image I love. Why is that? Why is it so easy to say no to praise and yes to criticism? The answer is self-confidence. Or the lack thereof. For me, I think that comes down to a lack of trust in my artistic vision. In fact, I am not even certain that I have an artistic vision, and I often question my ability to fully develop one. Sometimes I just feel like a poseur.
But then I remind myself: I know what I like. Deeply, intuitively. So when all else fails, I just trust that.
With these thoughts in mind, I took another look at those ferns. I tried to see them with fresh eyes. But also with my own. I tried to re-edit them in a different way. Perhaps a wash of color would have made the entry stand out more. Maybe one of the other frames worked better. I tried a bunch of different variations. Some I thought worked better than the original, and some I thought were worse. Examples of both are in the image at the top of this post. I’m not going to tell you which is which. Because I have come back around to liking those ferns again.
And I still don’t trust myself if you happen to disagree.