How to Give Constructive Criticism

Posted: April 07, 2015

Receiving criticism can be difficult to deal with, especially if it was given less than constructively. Constructive critiquing is common practice in the photography industry should do. These tips can help give constructive criticism to ensure that it's not given in a negative way.

Lynsey Mattingly, writer for Digital Photography School, shares how to give and receive photography critique with grace.

Constructive Photography Critique: How to Give and Receive with Grace

I’ve been in a funk lately. Just a little……off. Like I often hear other people do, I blamed it on the weather and assumed it would pass. A month later and it still hadn’t budged. This wasn’t the snow or the cold, yet completely normal, temperatures—it wasn’t even my kids who have been relatively low maintenance lately (all things considered). There was only one thing left to do before I took complete stock of my life and started looking into some serious therapy or, dare I even consider, enroll in a yoga class, and that was to bug my husband about it: “What’s wrooooong with me? Why am I sooooooooo cranky? Why don’t you tell me I’m pretty and feed me cookies anymore?” His reply was: a) “I do tell you you’re pretty and you know where we keep the cookies”, and b) “well, you’ve taken some pretty harsh blows lately.” He was right. I have had more than a lions share of un-constructive criticism tossed my way these last few months. I consider myself to be fairly good at rolling with the punches. I accepted a long time ago that not everyone is going to like me; no matter how badly I want to invite them over to my house and tell them they are pretty and feed them cookies and convince them to. And not everyone is going to like my photography. I can deal with those things—I really can. Like many of you, I saw early on that photography strikes so many chords with people, it’s very easy to get an internet debate going between total strangers about whether a random image is good or not. Read the entire article Constructive Photography Critique: How to Give and Receive with Grace on Digital Photography School.