Having spent many years on Photography forums, I’ve delivered my fair share of critique to budding photographers and received an equal amount myself. I’ve personally always taken extensive time out when critiquing an image to make my critique meaningful to the photographer and doing my utmost best to not break their spirit but instead to boost them to try even harder. Giving critique on images is not an easy job by any means and formulating your words so as not to cause offence is a skill that only a few possess. Quite simply, if you do not have the time to deliver a meaningful critique then rather say nothing at all.

I’ve seen so many photographers with oodles of potential sign up on a photography forum and have their spirits broken by people who do not know how to say things nicely or in some cases say things to deliberately break someone’s spirit. There are so many great photographers out there on forums who are more than eager to give of their time and help someone grow and improve, but there are also (quite sadly) some not so nice people who cannot stand the slightest hint of competition and will dig into their toolboxes of nasty comments to try and break someone’s progress.

You need some thick skin to be a photographer and to display your work online but not everybody possesses this. You need to be able to take a meaningful comment and use it to improve yourself and you need to know when someone is simply trying to get under your skin and simply delete their comment or just ignore it.

Now when I say meaningful critique, I mean a lot more than what I call the 3-H-Salute (Three H Salute). The three H salute is simply Halo – Hotspot – Horizon. This is a common tool in the arsenal of forumites who live, eat and breathe forum life, mostly on their employer’s time. Seldom do these type of critiquers ever deliver meaningful comment other than pointing out the blatantly obvious stuff like a) your horizon is slightly off level b) you have a hot spot in the sky or c) you have a halo in your image caused by oversharpening the image or something else that caused a halo effect. Make no mistake, these 3 elements of a photograph are essential to and often unseen by beginners as it is easy to miss these problems in an image when you’re just starting out. But these are not the be-all and end-all of a great image. In fact most great images have some type of flaw in them and most people would never notice that your horizon is slightly off level when there is enough wow factor in the image to keep your eyes peeled elsewhere. Some of the greatest photographers in history could post their work online today and have their work ripped to shreds by intermediate photographers.

Horizon:
Having a level horizon in an image is an important factor especially with seascapes where your horizon is actually a straight line. When it comes to landscapes in the interior of a country however, horizons are often not level by any means and only those who do a lot of photography away from the seaside will know this. Most camera’s today have levelling devices built in or photographers with older digital camera’s can purchase a hot-shoe

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bubble level which will help them level the camera. That said, when it comes to shooting around mountain ranges you may have your camera perfectly level but the image horizon looks off-level due to the way the land is shaped.

Posting such images online will always attract a comment about your horizon and you trying to explain it to the person commenting on it is often just futile because the next image you post will have the same person saying the exact same thing. So, for those starting out, learn to level your camera and trust it regardless of what others are saying. Some forumites go to extreme, often insane levels to prove your horizon is off-level, they’ll take your image into photoshop and draw a level horizontal line and then come back with comments that your horizon is 0.2 degrees off level, do yourself a favour and ignore ignoramuses like this.

Not all horizon's are level. This image shot from a perfectly levelled camera, this is the way the scene appears to the natural eye. Also notice the hot spot which is also perfectly natural. This image would attract numerous horizon and hot spot comments on a forum. Click image for a larger view.

Hot spots occur naturally even to the human eye. There are times when the sun is naturally illuminating clouds so much that they lose all detail. Put your camera down and look at such scenes with your naked eye and you will see for yourself.

Hotspot’s:
A hot spot, normally in the sky section of an image, happens mostly with sunset and sunrise images when you are trying to expose your foreground more and as a result you overexpose the brighter sky section. This causes areas of the sky to lose all detail and have a very noticeable white or “hot” spot. Using filters to control exposure of the sky can eliminate hot spots but there really is far too much fuss about hot spots on forums. Many images from the world’s leading photographers will contain hot spots, I know because I’ve seen it repeatedly. I’ve even seen images that would be ripped apart of a photography forum, take first place in an international photographic competition. Clearly judges who are trained and experienced enough in judging photography can see an image for what it is and do not spend that much time looking for tiny technical flaws in an image. If an image comes in front of a judge and his immediate reaction is “WOW,I wish it were mine”, your image will progress further in the competition without the judges sitting there trying to discredit you on something like a hot spot. Hot spots in all reality are natural occurences that exist to the human eye. Those preaching HDR photography techniques, seem to have convinced themselves that hot spots are foopah and do not exist in real life but seldom do I ever see HDR fanatics ever spending time WITHOUT a camera truly surveying scenes with their eyes, noting down all the tiniest details. If they did, they would notice that even to human eye hot spots DO exist. As I say, those with enough experience like judges of photography competitions, seem to know this and will not kick your image out due to it having a hot spot. So by all means be aware of hot spots, try to expose as best as you can but don’t beat yourself up when you post an image on a forum and you get 15 parrot comments about a hot-spot.

Halo’s:

Extreme Over-Sharpening can cause very visible halo effects on your image. Some halo effects however are natural occurences. This image has been deliberately over-sharpened to illustrate the effect.

Halo’s are a tricky issue. Some halo’s in an image occur naturally due to the way light is bouncing around your scene, other’s are however introduced while processing the image often when sharpening the image. Learn to identify what a halo is, whether it occurred naturally or whether you created it in your post processing. When you receive comments about halo’s in your image, go back to your original frame and look carefully at that section of the image and decipher if you are the one that created the halo or whether it exists in your original frame. If you introduced it, go back to step 1 of your processing and figure out at what stage you introduced a halo. If the halo exists naturally, which it quite often does, due to the way light was bouncing around, simply ignore the comments or if you feel up to it try explaining it to the commenter’s but don’t think they won’t be back saying the same thing about other images from the same shoot where this same anomaly exists.

Forumites will often comment on this as a halo, it's NOT. It's a natural effect caused by contrasting light conditions. This is an unedited image, straight from camera.

While the above 3 elements are important aspects to pay attention to, they are NOT the be-all and end-all of photography. There are much more important factors of an image that go completely ignored because forumites get fixated on the 3-H’s. Critiques on aspects like composition, colour accuracy, tonal range, shadow detail and a host of other things are often in short supply on forums. Mostly it’s because those who like to comment all day long have a fixation with clocking up their post count to make themselves appear as major contributors to the forum, this often results in them trying to comment too much on a daily basis and they literally do not even LOOK at an image but instead just look for the 3 H factors mentioned above.

By all means if you are a budding photographer, eager to improve your game, make no mistake that a forum is a place where you will learn the quickest and the knowledge you will gain from other photographers is invaluable. So don’t think I am knocking photography forums. I am trying to help you not get fixated, upset or have your spirit broken by people who only seem to concentrate on the 3-H’s and never actually look at your image for what it is.

You will learn quickly enough who are the troublemakers on a forum and who are the ones who never have anything good to say. If you find yourself being constantly harassed by someone, report it to the moderators of that forum or just ignore the person or block them from commenting if the forum you are on permits that functionality. Search out the members of the forum who do take time to deliver meaningful critique and send them a private message asking them to comment on your work, you’ll be surprised how many of them will be more than eager to assist you in growing as a photographer and always remember your good manners by saying thank you to those who take the time to help you and give credit where credit is due.