Knowing how to objectively evaluate your own work is crucial to growing as a photographer and continuing to offer the best possible images to your clients. This fantastic video will give you a five-step process to evaluating the quality of your photos and understanding where you need to improve.
Coming to you from Photo Tom, this excellent video will give you lots of helpful advice on how to better evaluate your images. Though this is oriented toward landscape work, the advice generally applies to most genres of photography and is worth hearing. One thing that has always helped me is to simply step away from my photos for a day after I finish editing them before I evaluate them. When you are in the midst of post-processing, it can be easy to get overly attached to your photos and lose your ability to be objective, plus your eyes can get a bit weary from staring so closely at your work for hours on end. Returning to your work after a good night's sleep can do wonders for your ability to look at it with the sort of detachment necessary to really grow. Check out the video above for the full rundown.
And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out "Photographing The World 1: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing with Elia Locardi."
I found this interesting and valuable, although it is important to understand this is one photographer's (Photo Tom) aesthetic and others are entitled to their own. The general guidance, however, as to what you should analyze is spot on.
great food for thought and some reminders for myself
Couple of tricks I have learnt .
1] rotate/flip the image horizontally or even vertically when evaluating the image .
2] less is often more (good) --- what is left out of the image (distracting elements) is often more important than what is in the image .
3] put the image away for sometime after editing --- when revisited image the faults/mistakes will jump off the screen .