Art Criticism on Flickr

I spend more time on Flickr, dealing with my SL art, than I actually spend in SL. So to some extent, the things that happen and get said in Flickr matter just as much to me as what happens in my SL life.

Recently a friend from SL joined Flickr and started looking through my pictures. He favourited some, which is great and puts me in my happy-place. And he commented and put notes on some about things he liked or found humourous in them, which is also in the “yayness” category. But. He also critiqued a rather large number of my works. By “critique” I mean he added notes to them about things he’d have done differently, and comments about what I’ve done wrong. Such as that I should have used the thirds rule, I should have cloned, removed certain parts of the image, and so on.

Now he meant well, I don’t doubt that. But it was the wrong place to do it, misguided, and arguably cruel. And I want to explain why, because having spoken to a friend about this, apparently my view on the matter is highly contentious.

First off: “The wrong place to do it”. If you want to critique an artwork on Flickr, and the person who’s done the art has not expressly asked for or hinted at wanted critique, then the polite place to do it is via private Flickr mail rather than publically under or (even worse) on the art itself. I’ve been told by another friend that Koinup provides an option you can select to say you want your work reviewed, to me that sounds like a sensible solution.

Secondly: “Misguided”. My art is a constant progression. Early on all I did was take a picture and post it – no editting. As time went by I started using the inbuilt Picnic program in Flickr to edit my pictures. Eventually (much later) I started using Gimp (which is like Photoshop, but free). Even though I now use Gimp and heavily edit my pictures, there is still a lot I do not know and am constantly learning about the art of picture manipulation. Now, to look at my earlier works and say I should clone certain areas and make various other technical changes, when back then I didn’t have the skills or knowledge, and indeed the pictures are up for me to look back and realise how far I’ve come, is for the commenter to miss the point. There’s a further consideration here as well about commenting on pictures when that person wasn’t there when the picture was taken – it’s very easy to look at someone’s picture then freely comment, but they are unaware of issues like prims and other people in the shot that you’re trying to exclude when you took the shot, so “I would have done x” is not the most helpful or informed stance for a great many pictures taken in SL.

And finally: “Cruel”. For me, my SL art (as I’ve said many times to many people in many places), is my outlet. It is a very important way in which I voice unspoken emotions and unburden my stresses, it has a vital calming and relaxing influence in my life. Often my SL art is a very personal and heart-felt out-pouring. Not all of it, but definitely a chunk of it. So when someone decides to tell me how I should have done my “out-pouring” differently, and adds a bunch of notes on top of it about where I’ve gone wrong, it – quite frankly – feels invasive and like an attack on my emotions and my expression of myself.

There is some art that I want people to openly critique, but I actually ask them to and in pictures that are set private for them and me only to view. I am constantly upgrading my picture skills through tutorials and experimentation, so I don’t actually need or want the average person coming along and telling me what to change, I’m already working on it, and each picture is just a record of that progression, not a claim at perfection.

The briefest of looks through other people’s comments on my and other art-works would have made clear to this person that people don’t use the comments or notes to “fix” other people’s work, but (as a general rule)to say rather if they admire it and what about it they liked, if anything.

It’s all comparative to using the comments section in this blog to “fix” my spelling and grammar. Would you do that..?

There, rant over. You may return to your usual programming.