I've been on the Critique Team nearly two years now, and have thoroughly enjoyed it. It's wonderful seeing people's enthusiasm blossom as they gain greater confidence and ability – particularly new-comers to photography.
We do see a lot of the same problems repeated time and time again. They are part of the learning curve... I'm not a blogger by nature but I thought I would list the main problem / advice areas that I see. There is some overlap between these items!
So here are some of the things that I type regularly in the Critique Gallery... In weeks to come I shall go on to give some thoughts on the different subjects in question.
Take control! Your camera has a good brain but absolutely no imagination or initiative. Don't rely 100% on it to take the decisions. Get to understand the settings available, and use them to get the effect that you want.
Shutter speed: When hand-holding and / or when photographing a subject that isn't guaranteed to be static, keep your eye on shutter speed. It matters! It needs to be fast enough to prevent camera movement, and to prevent subject movement. Remember for example that if there is the slightest breath of wind, a flower on a thin stalk can travel a long way in 1/30 second. A young child can move even further...
Light is everything. Study it, understand it, work with it not against it. And accept that sometimes it just won't co-operate with what you want to do.
Black & white conversions: I'd advise against taking in-camera b&w; much better to convert later - it leaves all the options open, allows you to control the colour channels. Never assume that a perfect colour image will convert automatically to perfect b&w, in particular check the histogram afterwards.
Adding toning, eg a sepia effect, will always reduce the dynamic range - lighten blacks, darken whites. Check after adding toning and adjust light as needed.
Don't try to run before you can walk. Get to understand the basics – how your camera settings work and what they do, and how to read and use the histogram, how to adjust the light in post-processing, before you start launching into special effects, filters, stitching panos etc.
Auto-focus: Never, ever, use a setting that gives you multiple focus points dotted over the screen. They should be banned! Use one point and use it carefully. Practise manual focusing when you have time to take it slowly and carefully, don't rush it.
Think about format / frame shape. I've read that 95% of pictures are reckoned to be taken landscape (horizontal) format. Don't forget portrait (vertical), think about the different ways the two work. And think about square crops.
Take time, don't rush the shot. Most subjects aren't going away in a hurry, and if you are waiting for a subject to appear in the frame (eg a passer-by), use the time to get prepared. If hand-holding, brace yourself solidly, feet a bit apart, elbows tucked in, holding the camera rock-steady. Think about your composition, your settings, what you want to achieve, before pressing the shutter button.
Allow space for your subject, think carefully about placement in the frame (don't just automatically plonk it down in the middle), think carefully about what cropping can add.
Composition isn't a pretentious arty-farty idea, it's vital – it's about how the photographer communicates to the viewer. How we get people to actually look at our images.
Careful focus is always important. The shallower the depth of field, the more precise you need to be. Remember that when using a large aperture close up, just pre-focusing and then moving the camera slightly to recompose will knock the focus.
White balance isn't really my area but here goes: The disasters that I see, arising from inappropriate customised white balance settings, are far harder to sort out than auto white balance. Unless you understand manual white balance settings and monitor the results you are getting very carefully, I reckon it's safer to stick to auto and adjust later. Which leads on to...
Raw: If you are not using Raw, aim to get to grips with it. It's worth it for the additional data it gives you to play with - particularly when you are coping with difficult lighting conditions.
Beware of over-sharpening. Get the image sharp in the camera to start with (careful focus plus adequate shutter speed); add a bit of sharpening after down-sizing for uploading to the web, but keep it discreet. Watch out for textures that start to break away from the surface, little lines that look too hard, diagonal edges that acquire a stepped edge.
And enjoy what you do. It's not actually a matter of life and death...
). Being someone who is slowly working my way into the depths of the critique team from the perimeter and only having been doing it for a couple of months, I do sometimes find that I'll look at an image and hit a wall as to what to say. Sometimes, I can't see anything wrong with an image presented in the critique gallery and think "yep, I'd have liked to have taken that one myself" ... so find it difficult to 'critique' something - particularly on the technical aspects where I don't feel that my own knowledge, such as it is, can contribute much for the original photographer. But, being on the team makes me feel as though I have to say something ... and I have been known, on the odd occasion, to actually say that I wouldn't change a thing! It kind of feels wrong saying that, but that's the honest truth!
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