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

[Tronhard · Accepted solution]

When I was learning photography, I spent a lot of time looking at the images of good photographers and figuring out why they were so good. I also studied the great painters for their composition and lighting.  I still do that after over 45 years. Then and now, there are books designed for study in that way. One book to help you engage with this process is "How to Read a Photograph" by Ian Jeffrey.   

They not only discuss the technical side of controls and light, but they give examples of images taken along with the settings and why the composition was set as it was.  These are invaluable because you can linger over them and really examine them in detail. For example, there are multiple books with the tutorial materials and examples:
"Digital Photography Step by Step" and "Digital Photography Masterclass" both by Tam Ang
"Complete Guide to Digital Photography" by Ian Farrell
There are likely more titles available through your local library.

What you need to do is consider each of the two aspects of photography:
1. The technical side: this is about understanding how light is perceived by us and a camera (there is a difference), and how the camera measures light.  Then how we use the controls of the camera, the so-called 'holy trinity' of Shutter speed, ISO and Aperture to get the correct exposure.   There are many, many combinations of those three that will give a correctly-exposed image, but each will have a profound effect on the final image.
2. The creative side: understanding how we view images, what attracts us, and how to use various compositional and exposure elements to create images that engage the viewer.  These are true whether they are of any genre.

When you have used the resources above for some time and put in a lot of practice on general photography, there are also videos available on shooting sports from Brigham Young University on You Tube.  Depending on the sports you engage with, you might want to watch some of those.  e.g.

[Ron888]

Your first sentence- well said!

[Tintype_18]

I download them to my laptop and ask my wife to look at them.