With any learning process, the effort followed by feedback on the effort is essential to cultivate encouragement and thereafter, success. In this sense it may be important to have a ‘guru’ to critique your work. At the same time, in these times of ‘everyone for himself’ there may be only so far that a guru may be willing to take you , and no more. Alternatively, you may progressive to such a level that you surpass the expertise of the instructor in question. If you are a true professional, you will achieve this level of minor success sooner than later. That is why it is critical to be able to critique your own work – after all, if you are a promising professional, your colleagues would love to see you fail!

It is strength to be able to see your own work objectively, while this statement may seem self contradictory to some. I strongly suggest you read upon subjectivity and objectivity to understand this better, or to confuse yourself enough into being a better photographer – take your pick. While this may seem like going off the subject of photography at first thought, it is important to realize that photography is in itself an art form, and any art form is a reflection of the psyche of the creator.

Ok, now for something a bit more practical and a little less philosophical. We, as human beings tend to have mood swings, different approaches to the same subject at different times (not all the times), and new ideas about old issues every now and again. In this scenario it may be a great idea to look at your executed work at a time when you are in a completely different, preferable opposite frame of mind to what you were when you took the photograph.  I believe that is as objective as one can get...

Next, it is quite possible that a person gets caught up with personal life to such an extent that he or she decides to become a ‘tough guy’ and doesn’t let anything get through to the emotional side. This is a dangerous situation for any artist, since you may stop ‘feeling’ emotions that would lead to successful photographs if you had channelized the feelings into the right stream; could have resulted in winning photographs. If you are a trained professional, you could still get winning images in this frame of mind, from practice, but would be unable to be able to critique them for lack of emotion. So, emotion is necessary for shooting as well as criticizing your own work.

Last but not the least we must speak of the ego, which can be quite blinding. If you are a photographer who has achieved some level of success, this could affect you. By this, we mean a degree of over confidence that lies to you that anything that you shoot is a winner. On the contrary, it could also mean that a beginner to condemn himself even for a winning shot. So, balance is necessary where a self opinion is concerned.