I had one of those weeks this week, when I just had loads of drive and energy.
I’ve been using a couple of street photography crit groups on Flickr recently, called Grit & Grain and a recent breakaway group Street Crit.
To participate, you do a five minute crit on each photo in the pool and then you submit a photo. Additionally, you mark each photo ‘ditch’ or ‘keep’. Once 10 ditches or keeps have accrued, the photo gets removed from the pool and a keeper ends up in a show pool. There’s usually up to ten pictures in the pool at any one time. Here’s an example of the system at work on one of my photos.
Funnily enough, the very first street photography group I was ever involved with on Flickr was the same format, but I quickly left it because people were very slow to add pictures and do their crits, which were rather short and pointless.
The same happened with the HCSP crit thread – the crits became ridiculously short. The thread is swamped with total beginners and everyone has to make a huge effort to take a deep breathe and say something constructive (kudos to the admins though, who’ve been keeping it going).
Well G&G and Street Crit are currently very lively groups. So if you post a photo, it soon gets a batch of reasonably well-considered crits (for the most part). Sometimes too many… If nine people like the photo and nine people dislike it, you can end up with eighteen crits mostly saying the same thing which is a bit overkill.
So they are good groups, but they have their problems. One is that the real expert photographers don’t take part (with one or two exceptions such as Justinsdisgustin). The really good photographers who take part in general Street Photography discussions on Flickr rarely ask for feedback on their work or give feedback on others work in public. It’s more the wannabes who want that feedback. The experts already have their own peers to get feedback from. On top of all this, some of the better photographers and the pros especially, are very frustrated with social networks right now. Because their photos get ‘stolen’ or misappropriated on other sites and just generally get consumed in an almost bulimic kind of way, with no structure in place for the photographer to be rewarded monetarily for their work.
This situation of disillusionment with social media and the way expert photographers have been leaving Flickr altogether – or withdrawing by deleting lots of their pictures – has been on my mind a lot lately. Not least because I miss listening to those guys points of view and I miss seeing their photos in my favourites. I’ve been trying to write an article about my experience of viewing pictures on Flickr for the past year – a positive experience – and how it contrasts with that disillusion which I’ve seen expressed in articles and discussions. It’s proving to be rather a large topic to grapple with. First installment coming soon though.
So I had seen two needs and I saw an opportunity to meet them both and bring them together. I’ve started my own group: Street Smart Marks Out of Ten. It hinges on peer-to-peer crits, but it has one key difference – periodically we’ll commission expert photographers to come and do crits for us (probably using a crowdfunding platform).
As well as that key aspect, I’ve tweaked the format a bit by having marks out of ten rather than ‘ditch’ and ‘keep’. This means that you never have more than ten crits on one picture; people don’t have to be confused or feel bad when their vote is borderline and the photographer can get a really accurate idea of how the picture is valued by someone. The group is invite only so we can avoid taking on people who’ve don’t really have any clue what street photography is yet.
In just a few days, the group has got going with 30 members and about six photos posted to the pool. On top of that, I have two expert photographers who have expressed interest and think it’s a good idea (though they’re a bit skeptical that people actually would pay for crits). I’m feeling really excited about it. I believe it’s really important for experienced photographers to be valued and for them to remain an active part of the Flickr community.
Frankie Sinclair 