I wrote this response to an appeal by the Admin of the Amateur Shutterbugs group on Flickr for members to comment on other members’ images:
Personally speaking, I find it very difficult to comment on an image if it has just a title and nothing else – no time of day, location, note of anything unusual. Just a little extra information about the image to provide you with a ‘hook’ into commenting would be really good.
Sometimes, since Flickr is very much a global community, you even have no idea where it was taken and you have to scrutinise the tags to see if they offer any information.
It’s even worse when it’s just a generic filename – something like DSC_39357 – which implies that either it’s part of a huge bunch of images uploaded in one go without any attempt to be selective or the Flickr member just couldn’t be bothered to think up a title or even consider why he/she was uploading the image in the first place.
While trying hard not to hurt feelings, it’s good to be as constructive as possible about an image and not just post the generic “Great image!”. Most folks who are serious about improving their creative photography skills (not necessarily those with the latest and most expensive whizzy-dizzy kit …) are happy to learn from other points of view. Not everyone will see the same image – some will pick up on one aspect and others will comment on something different.
It’s also quite time consuming to study an image and write an intelligent comment – I know I tend to do this on images I like and pass over images that don’t appeal to me so much. This is a bit lazy really – sometimes deliberately commenting on something you’re not keen on can teach you something about your own perception.
Thoughts about commending on Flickr
I wrote this response to an appeal by the Admin of the Amateur Shutterbugs group on Flickr for members to comment on other members’ images:
Personally speaking, I find it very difficult to comment on an image if it has just a title and nothing else – no time of day, location, note of anything unusual. Just a little extra information about the image to provide you with a ‘hook’ into commenting would be really good.
Sometimes, since Flickr is very much a global community, you even have no idea where it was taken and you have to scrutinise the tags to see if they offer any information.
It’s even worse when it’s just a generic filename – something like DSC_39357 – which implies that either it’s part of a huge bunch of images uploaded in one go without any attempt to be selective or the Flickr member just couldn’t be bothered to think up a title or even consider why he/she was uploading the image in the first place.
While trying hard not to hurt feelings, it’s good to be as constructive as possible about an image and not just post the generic “Great image!”. Most folks who are serious about improving their creative photography skills (not necessarily those with the latest and most expensive whizzy-dizzy kit …) are happy to learn from other points of view. Not everyone will see the same image – some will pick up on one aspect and others will comment on something different.
It’s also quite time consuming to study an image and write an intelligent comment – I know I tend to do this on images I like and pass over images that don’t appeal to me so much. This is a bit lazy really – sometimes deliberately commenting on something you’re not keen on can teach you something about your own perception.
It certainly made me think …..