Photography

The MagMod Community on Facebook is largely pretty nice and inspirational. But even there, I managed to run into several people who suddenly decided they needed to critique and offer (bad) advice on my photos despite it being a primary rule not to offer unsolicited advice. Anytime I call people out for it, they lose their minds and cuss me out (then get banned). It's a good time /s But for the most part people are really nice there because it's active and the MagMod team moderates it.

Always been that way across several forums.

Part of the “toxicity” is the common requests for feedback and constructive criticism. So the responses are limited to, “here’s where you can improve.” Then people are offended that the responses aren’t just likes and praise.

It’s because they’re full of older-middle-aged to elderly white men with little other outlet (bc they are jerks) who are focused on their camera brand as an identity.

I’ve never experienced this in person, because those types either don’t show up to things in person, or they’re too cowardly to act that way in person. Even when I was a 14yo girl hanging out at the camera store, all the dudes were at least polite to me, most of them very friendly and supportive.

Non-brand-specific forums for more niche interests like manual focus lenses, film development, medium format and large format, etc are also more polite and friendly, collaborative. Even the very old-school forums like mflenses and getdpi.

I agree Reddit’s better because it’s more casual but also because the audience is younger. Not that young people (esp men) can’t be enormous jerks about their special interest — live voice online gaming? never! — but they often have other things to do.

Some photographers are some of the biggest dbags commenting on the internet. You see it all over instagram.

That’s photography in general.

I’ve been shooting pics for about 50 years, and while there have always been egotistical douches, in the last 20 years or so I’ve encountered innumerable photographers who seem to live to crap on other people’s work, refuse to help newbies unless they are getting paid stupid money to do it, and generally think they are insanely talented and most everybody else is a hack. It’s why I don’t talk to a lot of established photographers, and only pop into the photo forums to help people.

I gotta always ask in this sort of complaint, where's the evidence?

I've generally found photography communities to be nice people.

Any hobby will have this

I find many hobbies where there's an expensive entry expense, there's an overabundance of toxic behavior. I saw a ton of it in the scuba community as well. I want to pin it on folks trying to justify spending even more than the small fortune it takes to even get the bare minimum amount of gear to start up. Like, "I spent a thousand bucks on a good quality telephoto lens; you couldn't possibly waste your time with a $200 kit lens" kind of energy.

Pair that with zero ramifications for anonymous snark and gatekeeping tendencies on reddit.

My pet theory is that it’s a fairly technical hobby but a fairly difficult art form. You can master focus, exposure, lighting and post-processing and still end up with a very boring photo. Have these technically competent but artistically bereft photos that most viewers just shrug their shoulders at and it drives them insane. Cut to a couple years later they have a huge chip on their shoulder and take out their frustrations on beginners asking about what camera to buy.

Most forums I see people only want kind or positive words. Which is different than honest constructive criticism. My point is it would seem many can’t tell the difference.

I think one of the biggest sources of conflict is between working professionals and casual hobbiests. From the pro photographers perspective, they dont want to answer stupid questions that could easily be googled. From the beginner/ hobbiest perspective, they are joining what they hoped would be a supportive community and are met with hostility over their lack of knowledge/skill.

I wont even hangout with my local photographers. Everybody judged WAY too much in the photography world.

This is why I really enjoy 52frames.com

Amazing community. All the perks of social media with none of the toxicity. A weekly photo prompt/challenge for anyone to submit and get feedback on if they like, and costs absolutely zero.

Tell me one public forum where this is not the case. Anonymity makes people impolite and unhelpful. You just gotta shake it off and move on.

I am used to political forums and as far as I'm concerned DP and Reddit and most other forums I've seen are helpful and cordial. Certainly no worse than audio or gaming forums.

I'm in the same boat.. looking for constructive criticism since moving to a real camera from my cell phone.. and crickets..

So, I'm just gonna keep taking pictures in the hopes I'm getting better. Lol.

offers positive / constructive criticism

Online critique is a scarce resource, it takes time/effort/expertise to do critique, and the people qualified to do that usually have better ways to spend their time.

I'm not sure how your interactions have gone, but you can improve the odds of getting useful critique https://alessandrachaves.com/2022/06/17/asking-for-a-critique-on-your-photos-helpful-tips/

You're not allowed to be mean on Reddit so all the softies hide here.

Lol at some of these comments. For the people who think there are "dumb questions" and that people should just Google it - there's a ton of garbage out there. Searching for nearly anything photography related is going to get them a lot of crank opinions and a lot of people upselling gear or software that they don't need.

If you're an experienced photographer, you likely automatically ignore most of it. But newbies can't really do that. If you don't want to answer a question for the 100th time, just don't answer 🤷‍♀️ You don't have to respond to every post on a public forum.

OP - I think you're unlikely to find good criticism on a general photography forum simply because photography is such a wide field. People's interest and experience vary wildly for format, subject matter, and style. So when you put all of them in the same room, I think criticism is going to coalesce around perceived technical flaws or outright trolling. Like if you really wanna shoot nighttime streets on an iphone, I'm gonna excuse myself from that conversation because that's not my area of expertise. You're gonna be left with the people from every other niche who don't mind telling you git gud or that you need a better camera.

Your best bet (at least online) is to look for forums or groups as tightly tailored to your particular style as possible. They'll be nicer and you'll get much more helpful feedback than you'll get from photographers at large. And really one of the best things you can do is try to forge a relationship with someone (online or IRL) who has the style you want to achieve. A good mentor is better than a hundred internet critics.

I haven't noticed that in the fora I visit. MFlenses and Pentax Forums seem like nice places. I mostly stick to places that like using old and obsolete sensors and glass.

To me, the cutting-edge modern gear discussions seem too Type-A Alpha Male Tribalistic My-gear-purchasing-decisions-reign-supreme-over-yours. So much competition to have the hottest gear.

You could remove "photo" from your question and it would still stand.

In almost any place where people gather - virtually or in real life - it is close enough to a certainty that at some point, however well-intentioned, well-moderated and well-meaning the place is, people will start being a**holes to each other.

I can think of exactly one place where this didn't happen, and that was on Ming Thein's site when it was running. The comments section of his articles (which was the closest thing the site had to a forum) was for the most part extremely cordial, or at least polite and respectful. Trolls and other such types were rare in the extreme. I can only guess that people were responding to talent and good writing.

But as a rule, yeah. It's like that old joke: God gave man religion, and then Satan came along and organised it. In this case it's like Tim Berners-Lee and the US military gave us the internet / web, and then people took this world-changing technology and used it to belittle each other over petty nonsense that means nothing.

Anyway, everyone knows that Canon cameras are garbage, I'm sorry, I said what I said, GTFOH, etc :-)

I'm generally nice. But sometimes I see post on my other hobby subs where the question would easily be answered with a few seconds of searching the Internet. For some reason this bugs me.

FredMiranda feels ok but then there's so many good photographers there I'm too intimidated to ever post anything tee hee. And by good I mostly just mean "I perceive them as better than I am, too scurrred".

id say its because its a hobby with a high barrier to entry for a """"good"""" camera. so people tend to want to show that their investment was worth it and the easiest way of doing that is putting others under them.

I’ve had great luck on Pentax forums. They have been generous with their time, made excellent suggestions, etc. Sure, there are some absolute asshats, but they seem to be far fewer there than other places.

Literally yes, and knowing some of the highest number IG photographers personally, I can say they are the epitome of many of the issues you see. They just can’t share them openly, lest be in the same light as Lik.

Photography is a beautiful mix of art and technical knowledge/ gear coming together. I don't care if I won every award in the world, I'd still never criticize/ critique someone's art from an internet post. It's too personal and there are a million reasons I probably don't understand the stuff I don't enjoy.

The technical on the other hand... that's easy to critique and can be helpful to everyone. If some reviewer scores a macro lens poorly for its performance wide open- it's a community service to point out they're an idiot.

That's literally every Reddit forum unfortunately

The hope would be to find knowledgeable people willing to share jnfo. Instead you get sarcastic people who want to mock your mistakes.

This is the reason I never joined a photo club. In my area were only people with expensive stuff refusing to share knowledge.

I’ve seen it on Reddit too. Someone asking for advice or opinion and all they get back is snappy responses.

Fact 1: It’s not the consensus that shooting film is more artistic at all. The cost of film plus having to wait for processing to see the results WILL make you a more thoughtful photographer however. Digital is fine but you must have the discipline not to just pop off a thousand shots to find 25 good ones. That’s not real photography it’s dumb luck and you will learn nothing if you do that.

Fact 2: Arguing about resolution and specs with gear-heads won’t advance your mastery of the art. It will just make you broke buying a bunch of stupid shit you don’t need.

Fact 3: Photography is mastery of controlling light and using the right glass. Master those two things and learn to have the instincts for their respective application and you’re halfway there.

Fact 4: Many people upgrade because camera companies set marketing traps for consumers. Dumping what you already have when you haven’t pushed it to its technical and limit is foolishness. Don’t buy gear to remove limitations you’re having. Instead work with what you have and try to overcome those limitations in a creative way.

Its because they are salty "freelancers" that most likely don't make any real income off their work. They have to feel superior somehow. The only way they can do that is social media.

That's any hobby space where people spend more time online being anonymous with an audience than they spend doing the hobby.