How to study or analyze one's photos

[Zhaopian]

Hello Canon Community,

Does anyone have any insight, advice, or thoughts on how to study or analyze one's photos to identify what is going wrong and what is going right? Essentially, in lieu of paying for a portfolio review, what steps or methods would you use to study your own pictures to improve across technical skills, composition, and editing?

Would you import your photos into an editor and pixel-peep, zoom or crop in, compare before/after shots after some kind of editing, compare camera settings, etc.?

My genre is photojournalism/sports, not fine art or even street photography, but the fundamental need to have knowledge and skills are the same, I guess.

[p4pictures]

Self appraisal of your photos is a tough thing to do at any time, even more so when your own proficiency level has plenty of room for improvement. Portfolio reviews are great ways to learn how to improve your photos, provided they are with a person who is qualified to give you valid critique. As a photojournalist your most important critiques will come from magazine and newspaper photo editors as they see & select the right kind of photos day in day out and know what works to tell the stories required for the publications. I always found World Press Photo exhibitions a great place to discover how photojournalists captured the world in story telling pictures.  

Learning some of the technical aspects is something you can build your own skills with. You need to discover what is the difference between subject movement, camera shake and focus errors. Looking at the shooting info in detail can help in this respect. Canon DPP software gives a huge amount of info about the camera settings used to create a photo. You just open the image unedited in DPP and press CTRL/CMD I to display the info panel. Take a look at the shutter speed, aperture and ISO you or the camera selected. Are they suitable for the picture you wanted to capture. Also check things like the focus settings, and where the AF point is located. Again DPP can show this. 

[Ron888]

One small trick ,if you dont know it already.
Take some time away from editing.When you come back you'll see things you wont have noticed before. I'll make several versions of an image with varying sharpness,contrast,white balance (or whatever ),then compare them later.

[kvbarkley]

https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/05/a-specific-detailed-progra...

You might also see if there is a local photography club, but the opinions there may be on the par with posting them to the internet