Grumpiness

In the main I have found this forum friendly and an invaluable source of information from lots of people who are always happy to help with answers to questions etc.

I do however think that feedback to some shots is not critical enough. I also realise it is not easy to tell somebody their shot is poor for whatever reason, but it should be done. A lot of shots posted are (imho) just not interesting, and in some cases feedback is sycophantic which helps no one and is annoying.

That's fair enough Karl, but it should never be destructive criticism. We don't want to discourage beginners unnecessarily, so when posting critique we should always say what we like about and image as well as what we think could be improved.

There are very good guidlines to offering critique given on ePHOTOzine.

nothing wrong with gearing the criticism to reflect the skill level of the poster.
I have high expectations of some people here and would comment on things that would be too trivial or advanced for a novice...
I try to make my suggestions relevant to the person who posted....
helping a noob improve requires a level of sensitivity and honesty that are harder to balance than picking apart a competition worthy pro level image...

with a learner you start by looking for positive things and then try to add advice to help them grow.
with a pro you start with the assumption that the image is good, and look for faults....

a good pro image is one you can't fault.
a good novice image is one you can find something promising in.

Agreed John!

I had better read up on those guidelines in case I ever, ever win one of the competitions

Snootchies said:

A wise man once said: A little revolution once and a while isn't so bad.
What he didn't say is that history has a tendency to repeat itself.
Nine out of ten times, the ones who started it, ended without their heads. That should tell people something, does it ?

I have noticed that I am also branded as fair game. Cronie was the word I think. That and the title Oldie seem to make a threatening combination.
Well.......I'll can't deny I am well over 20 and if being a Cronie puts me in the same room as George and John, I'll wear that title with pride and without prejudice.

Martin.

edit: forgot to ad quote, relevant for my post.

good luck unless you plan on going all Nancy Karrigan on Lilly!!!Ya big Galloolie

I would hope that I fall into that category, I try to be "condescending" but constructive towards newbies but if your an experienced photographer you'd better watch your back in fact I think I recently told Lilly I was sure she could do better

Karl: we should organise a Yorkshire meet then I can use my experience to show you how to take really crap photo's

NURSE!! He's out of bed again!

Thanks George; my faith in you has been restored!

Phew! What a rant I've missed

Nice to know that Cloudhunter will be reserving the vitriol for just this forum and not his own

@Don: thanks for the kind thoughts
@Nathan: welcome back
@George: great to see you posting more frequently

Matt

I share your sentiment on that Matt.

Seems to be a refusal to aknowledge their own contribution and major influence to the insults which have been flying around.

Unless Cloudhunter makes a personal commitment to curb a bit of an attitude problem, this situation is bound to eventually rear it's ugly head on his own forum too.

Shall we all go and join his forum?

:EVIL LAUGH:

I suspect we would be banned there a lot faster than it took for him to be banned here.
I hope he and his new forum members enjoy their forum wherever it is. I have no desire to meet up with him again.

I did'nt realise he had been banned now.

Fair enough, I hope we can return to normality. His influence was very unsavoury I have to say.

I appologise if my comments last night annoyed anyone - I just did'nt like the effect this thread was having on the community one bit.

I know a little revolution once in a while is'nt necessarily a bad thing, and I appologise Martin if I went too far with my comments.

I was mainly concerned for newcomers who may not appreciate that this was an extraordinary situation. I've certainly not witnessed bitter exchanges before on this forum as can be seen earlier on this thread (perhaps i've not been looking in the right places!)

I hope things like this can (largely) be a thing of the past now.
George's original post was perfectly acceptable, and the subsequent thread which emerged did'nt deserve to end up the way it did in my opinion.

I too hope we can settle back into our usual good natured, helpful banter.

I too went a bit far in this discussion, for which I too apologise.

I hope it hasn't put too many people off the forum, especially newbies.