Learn the Language of Photography Through Critique | Eileen Rafferty
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The subject should be leading role, everything else should be supporting it.
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Composition is a huge part of how the subject will be shown.
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Form is big because it’s all the visual stuff.
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visual elements: line shape texture and color
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Critiques are subjective and it’s important to make a suggestion on why you think it should be changed
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Visual elements/Technical choices: aperture shutter speed focus and exposure
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Content can often be one of the harder parts when talking about photo
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You can ask yourself if the meaning is immediately noticeable.
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Symboling and meaning is different for everyone and is important to talk about.
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Sometimes the subject isn’t the most important thing to talk about.
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It sometimes will be the subject or meaning the is the easiest to talk about.
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Some words that are popular for “academic how to critique”:
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Describe
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Analyze
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Interpret
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Evaluate
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But it really comes down to what do you See, what does it Feel like, and what fo you Think about it.
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When you ask yourself what you see, you are asking yourself more about the technical things for example:
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Exposure
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White Balance
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Subject
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Depth of field
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But for these you might not talk about them if they’re bad.
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Also can talk about formal aspects when looking at the pictures:
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Lines
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Shapes
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Colors
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Texture
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Composition
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Lens choice
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Perspective
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Presentation is really important and a very valuable tool that will either help promote or kill an idea.
- You can ask yourself what do you feel when you look at a photograph.
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What emotion do you get or what mood does it give off?
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Is it evoking any other senses?
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- Annihilation is NOT a critique.
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Be careful/think about who you seek out feedback from.
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Diptych: two images shown together purposefully.
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Sometimes there will be some elements that are so outstanding that it cannot be ignored.