RAW - FOLIO - CRY - RE EDIT

* Bottom left - Original RAW file.
* Top Left - Folio Image.
* Right - Today's Image

At our photography club we have a thing called folio's, in said folio's members have to enter images for other members to give constructive feedback to help improve the image.

It can be a good thing sometimes (like in this image above) but other times it can be a tedious read, going through negative comments on an image you hold in high regard.

Some members take the task far too seriously & really shoot your images down, which makes the job of taking criticism on the chin hard when it's your turn to comment on theirs (especially if it is a poor image they've entered). Sometimes you soooooo want to shoot a fellow members image down for comments they've made about yours, but thats not my style. I give one or two positive comments then an idea to play around, with no negatives if I can help it.

At the end of each season you get your images back with a feedback report from each member, you normally find that one or two people pick you up on something that really helps while the others agree with said comment (thats if their hand writing is readable). Even worse is when a member sees your images being judged by a competition judge & decided to use the judges opinion as their own.

With this image in the folio the first few comments were about the break in the fence being too distracting, this shows the folio's at it's best & helping me. Then this image was entered into a competition where the judged picked up the same green striped break for being too distracting but his comment was:-

"the author has shown really poor editing skills by attempting to cover something up in the background with a fence that's not even blended in the right direction.. Poor editing!".

After that comment was made every other person that gave feedback in the folio just said the same as the judge. All this is my fault though for using an image in a competition while the folio's are still active.

I laugh looking back at the comments as the fence was not edited at all until todays version.

I'm not going to enter next years print folios unless I have a trophy to defend, as my printers are not doing my work any favours at the moment, they leave an odd casts over the image which I'm aware of but gives other members ammo to shoot them down. I'll stick to digital for now.