I’m a member of a Facebook page or two where photographers can invite other professionals to critique their work. One guy recently complained about how some folks don’t have a Facebook page for their business, so how can you see their work and then determine if their critique bears any merit or not? It’s a fair question in a way. For sure I take advice from photographers who’s work I admire and weed out the stuff I deem uninteresting or simply not skilled. Then again, I don’t have a Facebook business page either so what do I know?! (Said tongue in cheek. An online portfolio is in the works. The cobbler’s children have no shoes, you know what I mean.)

What I do know is this: clients should hire photographers based on their work. Peruse a Facebook page, a blog, a professional portfolio. Look at what they do and then hire them if you like it. If you don’t like it, don’t hire them.

What we all like is so subjective. I know what I like and I shoot that. When I start shooting what I do not like, I lose my creative spark and passion for my art. I am finding more and more photographers who are slaves to trends—and I find that pretty boring. I won’t be shooting sexy senior portraits or Anne Geddes baby images or engaged couples in positions that would make our grandmothers blush. Instead I will shoot families that love each other. I will shoot a mother looking adoringly into her newborn’s face. I will capture a quirky toddler laughing and doing his own thing and holding up dirty fingers for my camera. I will capture real moments. Life-giving moments. Real world experiences and memories for a lifetime. I want to be there, documenting the gritty moments as well as the posed ones that look kind of nice on the mantle in the living room.

I love photography. I love people. I love sunlight. Critique is helpful in moving forward as an artist and someone else’s opinion bears merit if I let it. But I have my own eye, my own perspective, and I aim to use it.