That is one of my photography friend yet mentor post a status in facebook photography group sometime ago. He holds a basic course for couple of times therefore mostly his students put the photo to the group and asked him to give comment and critique.
I was learning from their photos as well, looking at the picture and reading the people’s comment. The posts were quite long, but scrolling through was quite fun. Until my friend posted that advice.
I like that advice yet there are 2 things we can take a look at.
1. When you are still learning, you will think that what you do is the best.
When we learn to draw for the first time, we think that what we draw is the best artwork even if it’s just a simple circle with solid blue color. So, it’s not wrong to post a photo that is not the best, because we have limited knowledge which one is good and which one is bad.
Don’t be afraid to ask people for opinions and ready to listen to their criticism will make us learn to improve ourselves.
2. Quality vs quantity
To some people, they are so active in forums or groups of their interests. For example, illustrations. One of my friends is very productive, he can draw 1 fully colored digital illustrations for every week. I admire his drawing, it’s good. (In a way, I feel that I should be more productive in my field, web design as well).
Until another friend commented that, if you take a look at his drawings, the style are quite similar to each other. In terms of the colors or drawing style. Then I asked my friend, is it good or bad? And he replied, it can be good and bad in the same time. The good thing is it’s a proof of his consistency, the bad thing is people will use to see it, thus the value of his drawing will have less impact.
What my friend said made remember about the lesson in customer service class I attended. It’s great to be able to give outstanding service to the customer every time, but once we failed to meet it, we are committing unforgivable crime (okay, I may exaggerate a little) . And it’s not easy for them to forget about our mistakes.
Give your best work will push us to do more for the next one. The learning curve maybe stepper, but I’m quite sure that all of us enjoy the learning process.
Have you give your best?
