The Importance of Good Feedback

I’d like to expand on last week’s post, moving on from how to deal with criticism into the realms of getting good feedback whenever and wherever you can.  Us photographers can be quite a solitary bunch, and we often don’t seek out critique of our work, or search for feedback.  

I should be clear what I mean by feedback.  I’m not talking about someone saying “That’s nice”, nor am I talking about someone telling you how much your work resembles something your dog might leave behind.  Neither of these is very useful - one gives you no reason to change or improve, the other will just ruin your confidence.  What we’re looking for is something that allows you to peel back the layers protecting your work, and drill down to the real issues within.  Whether these are technical, aesthetic, or creative, they’re all relevant, and they all stop you from becoming the photographer you’re capable of being.

Good feedback permits much faster development right across the board.  On a really simple level, consider how much faster the feedback loop is when shooting digital than shooting film.  Old soldiers like myself are slightly resentful of how much quicker and easier it is to learn technical things in the digital age - simply make adjustments to the camera, and then look at the screen on the back to see what effect they’ve had.  Back in the film days, it was vital to make copious notes, then compare them to the finished article hours, or sometimes days later.  That’s assuming you didn’t send your film off to a lab that simply averaged everything out when it printed it anyway, making much of the process redundant!

Getting a ropey image back from the lab, days or even weeks after you shot it (and with no built in metadata to rely on), wasn't very helpful in working out what you'd done wrong!

Technical issues are often pretty easy to spot, and correct, but matters of creativity, ideas, along with lots of the “soft” skills that go with being a photographer, are often much harder to pinpoint, certainly on your own.  Here’s where insightful 3rd party feedback will really benefit you. 

Before anyone thinks I’m some kind of zen-like, ego-free being who can handle everything said about my work with a huge level of detachment, I ought to describe my very first day at college studying for a degree back in 1995.  I’d scraped into the course by the skin of my teeth - I didn’t meet the basic requirements to get on the course, and got through by dint of a very strong recommendation on my application from my tutor at sixth form, and then bullshitting in my interview.  I was also the youngest in my year, with many of my contemporaries considerably older and more experienced than me.

A couple of images from that 1995 portfolio

After the first morning being shown the basics (here are the toilets, if the building catches fire, please don’t stand around near the chemicals in the dark room, that sort of thing) we had a “getting to know you” session in the afternoon.  Being photographers, this consisted of every first year laying their portfolios out in the 2 lecture rooms, and allowing every student to wander round and look at them, offering insights and critiques as they went.  My portfolio consisted of 10 images, shot on 35mm black and white film, then printed in the outside loo back home.  Not actually in the toilet you understand - I had built a darkroom - but the enlarger was balanced on a shelf on top of the cistern - you get the idea.  At the time, this was the very best work I could produce, both technically and creatively.  The gulf between what I could produce and what some of my contemporaries were capable of rapidly became apparent when James - who later became my housemate - opened his portfolio next to mine.  A stunning set of portraits, shot on medium format film, exquisitely printed, that wouldn’t look out of place in a Sunday Supplement magazine appeared, and I felt my heart sink, and my insecurities come rushing to the fore.

I promptly closed my portfolio up, and shoved it down the back of the radiator, hoping no-one would notice it, or me.  This tactic worked in the short term - for about 30 minutes.  It’s not a tactic that would have worked for the remainder of my 3 years on the degree, and it certainly wouldn’t have worked out in the real world.  Imagine creating work, and then hiding it all - how could you hope to ever progress, let alone actually make a living?  Just as crucially, how did I expect my work to ever improve without some feedback and constructive criticism?

Nowadays, I relish the chance to offer feedback, but as a professional it's quite rare for me to receive any!

Over time at college, I came to appreciate the incredibly valuable feedback that came from friends, student critiques, and above all from the lecturers.  I realise now how lucky I was in my career arc to have access to good lecturers at college.  You see, college may well be pretty much the only time in your career when someone will genuinely give a shit about what you do, and can manage to be fairly objective it, backed up (hopefully) by years of experience and insight.  Regular access to this insight is still one of the things I think is most valuable about studying photography, and something often overlooked by the brigade of self-taught, “I don’t need no education” photographers.

What I'm driving at is that it's OK to be sensitive and protective of your work - I am, and anyone who cares about what they create will be - but never seeking any feedback on it, because you're afraid of what you might hear, will do your work more harm than good in the long run. If you want to make progress with your work (or even, possibly, start to charge money for it in some way) you've got to get it out there - you can't hide it behind the radiator!

The best feedback will come from people who make an attempt to understand what you were trying to create, and then can give you a fairly objective opinion about how well you've achieved it, as well as suggesting steps you can take in future to get closer to making better work. When you find these people, cling onto them with both hands!