 There we go. How's it, how's it, guys? I have in my hand a role of Provia 400x120 film that says it's exposed. This role of film, I totally forgot about it. I don't know what pictures are on here at all. What I do know is it's probably about 20 years old, and had I not found it when I was digging around through my old student prints the other day, this would have been lost to history. And it reminded me of the story of another photographer who had a decision gone in a different way. Her images would also have been lost to history. So it is the mid-1950s, and this photographer, Eve, is thinking about going to a class run by a gentleman called Alexei Brodovich, who was the art director of Harper's Bazaar. He was mentor for Richard Avedon, Irvin Penn, some really huge names in photography. And she goes along, walks in with her little envelope of what she calls camera club prints in her book, and realises immediately that she's like a little bit out of her depth there. Because this is an art director for Harper's Bazaar, so rather obviously the entire classroom is full of experienced professionals who are looking to be closer to the master, Alexei, you know, the hope of getting a job. So Eve makes a decision, I'm not going to show any of my prints. Alexei's at the front of the class, and he gets up and he says, has anybody brought some prints along? Two showers. And it's at this point that Eve's friend holds up this envelope of prints, waves them around and goes, here, here, here, at the back, at the back. The envelope gets passed forward, Alexei takes them out, and he presents them. He says reaching down to get one of print. He presents them to the class, for critique. And Eve recounts her in her book. She goes, I felt flayed alive. I think we could probably imagine, you know, the feeling that she's getting. Everybody who's been in a live critique session may recognize it. And it's at this point that the two Eves start to diverge. She goes on to recall here that she ran home with my envelope, weeping. I agonized for a day, and then when I thought that I decided absolutely that I would not go back to class, I found myself saying that the following week's assignment was fashion. And asking my son's nursemaid who lived in Harlem whether she knew of any fashion shows there. This is where I think a lot of us who may be subjected to this kind of criticism would take the first option of just giving up. I've had enough, I don't really want to do this, right? That's the response I'm going to get. Because it can be very hard to take. But the second Eves goes off to Harlem. She fiddles with her camera, the flashes and working. Don't forget this is all days before auto everything takes them back. Alexa puts them at the bottom of the pile. She's saying, oh, here we go. He doesn't like them. He's going to save it to the end. Everybody can just have a go at me again. This is it. And he gets to the end of the pile of prints. He says, look, I'm going to change up my normal thing. I'm going to critique these myself. He looks at them. He goes, this, this is real. This is documentary photography. This is very different from everything else that the other students have supplied, which is kind of like set or beaten type fashion. He says, you are not doing any more assignments for this class. I want you to go and learn by doing. I love that. That's awesome. It's like such cool sort of piece of piece of, you know, advice. Those photographs, they get published in picture post. That's when Henry Cartier-Bresson and Robert Kappa see them and then go, do you know what Eve, would you like to join Magnum as a photographer? And that's when Eve Arnold, the photographer is born. But how many people would have possibly gone down that first route of not going back? How many great photographers, potential great photographers, have been lost to us throughout history? Because somebody said something negative to them about their work. Just a quick interruption because I totally forgot earlier is that this Sunday, it's 4th of February at 6 o'clock. It is the live stream of my natural light workshop. If you have bought a ticket already, I've been sending out some emails with the URL that you're going to need to access the workshop. If you haven't received one of those yet, please check your spam folder. If you can't find anything, reach out to me. I'll make sure that you actually get a link so you can join us. If for any reason you are not able to make the live stream or you would like to join, but you think, okay, well, I've got something else planned. If you buy a ticket now, you will have access to the recording of the live stream in your TPE course library as well. So there's no excuse to miss out. But yeah, check your spam folders. If you haven't signed up already, you want to get a seat, click on the description box below with the link. And let's get back to the video. I think it's a shame that these kind of things happen. And I can see why because I think about my own experiences that when I was a student, we would have assignments and then we would be critiqued as a group in a lecture room where they put all the prints up in the wall. The lecturers would have a look at them and they'd say, this is the next thing about them. And then your friends would also say their opinions or share their opinions about your work. And it might go something like this, you know, oh, Alex, that work. Oh, Jesus, you know, come on, man. It was like there's no tonal range on this or your focus is all nonsense and your composition, man. That's just, that's just sucky. There we go. And within that, you may recognise there's a type of tone of voice that says, I'm giving you critique, but I want you to improve. I want you, you can do better than this. There is a support development. At least that's how I always kind of read it. You know, I got this feeling that, you know, people are pushing me as I was pushing other people to be as good as they could be. That's why we were all there. We were all pulling in the same direction. The problem that I find online, especially over the years when I've been a member of a lot of photography groups, is that people don't necessarily have that mutual support. There's a lot of people who come in. They just want to show how much they know by, you know, critiquing everything in sight and telling everybody what's wrong with the pictures. There are people who are having a bad day and they just want to vent. There are people who just, you know, they just kind of muddle along and just don't really contribute to anything. So I think, you know, if I were looking for a place to really get some decent feedback on my photography that wasn't like a paid course or something like that, then I would look for a few things. The first of all, the main thing is that, is that community active? That's a great site. If it is a community of even like 20 people and there are like two or three posts a day, that's pretty good. If it's a community of 100,000 people and there's only like 10 or 20 posts a day, I would say that's probably a bad sign because there's a lot of people come in and they're just not, they're not interacting with each other. So there's no momentum going on. If you see that there's, you know, images are getting comments and people are having a back and a forth in the discussion. What a great sign. That's such a helpful thing to see within a group. The second thing I would probably look at is the nature of the comments. Now, not everybody is going to be making comments that are super helpful. Some people just, they're not very eloquent when they type or whatever reason. They may just say, that's a nice photograph. That's kind of cool. Those kind of comments, okay, you see a lot of those nice capture, but there will be, or hopefully there will be, if this is the right kind of group, a number of voices who offer feedback, who offer supportive criticism in a more supportive kind of way. They would say, you know, I really like that photo. I see where you're going with that. But I think it might be stronger if you tried this or have you considered looking at such and such? Or, you know, I think maybe color is the wrong choice here or that certain element, the way that you compose is a bit distracting. Those, I feel, those are supportive comments. People saying that you've done this wrong or that's, you know, this, I have a reflector here, right? So they might say you've used the silver side of the reflector rather than the white side. So this is kind of saying, well, this is light or that kind of light was touching those. That's all wrong. Those are, I think those are the comments that you need to be careful and be mindful of. If you go back to Eve Arnold, you know, Alexa is saying your work is very different. I want you to go and explore it. I want you to find you learn by doing, right? He could have said, look at this work. It is all rubbish. You're not doing it the correct way. Eve, you need to follow these people over here and do this. Do that. Do the next thing because that's the way it is done. But he doesn't. He recognizes within Eve Arnold that she has a talent and he knows that her talent is not going to benefit from being the next Cecil Beaton. So he's intelligent enough to be able to recognize this and to be able to guide Eve Arnold in the direction that she will benefit from going because it suits her. Somebody with more knowledge saying, have you considered this direction because I think that would be a good way for you. These are signs that once you actually kind of are open to them and looking for them, you start to find them. I've followed many people and listened to many bits of advice that were actually very bad for me but seemed like a good idea at the time. And it wasn't only until later in my career, and I'm thinking sort of 2010 around about then, that I finally came across a couple of guys who were of that caliber and they weren't strictly mentors because we never had like a formal arrangement of mentoring. But they were very supportive with my photography and especially my wedding photography, which is something that I've been revisiting recently. I've been looking a lot of it and I see their influence. They guided me into a path in wedding photography because that's what specifically we're talking about at the time that worked for me because they kind of went, Alex, you talk about this, you like this, you like that. This may be something that's worth exploring and they were right. So I think that's a fantastic way of finding somebody is just listening, looking at the people who are supportive with you, who don't tell you that you're doing things wrong but suggest that you're kind of going in a direction that might not actually suit you. I hope through some of these videos that I make and we talk about the ideas and the photography that I expose us all to, that it sparks ideas, avenues within you that you kind of go, actually, I'm going to explore that. And that from hearing other people's stories of listening to people like E. Arnold, that you realize that somebody can say something negative about you, that they can give you some harsh criticism or to use the words of E. Arnold, feel like you've been flayed alive. But that's not the end of the road. That's one person's opinion. So this weekend, as you're going out there, whatever you've got up, think about your photography, think about over the course of this year looking for someone, or just keeping an eye out for somebody who can support you in your photography. Even if it's just a kind of a moral support who can just go, somebody who can sit down and go, I'm struggling with this. Man, can I get an honest opinion about it? Somebody who can give you an honest opinion that doesn't consist of just blowing smoke up your backside. That, I think, is something that if you can find that person, and I can't tell you where or find it specifically, because everybody, of course, is going to be different, then just go with the flow, man. Find somebody. They're out there. As the saying goes, the teacher appears when you need them. Anyway, thank you ever so much for watching. If you'd like to watch more about E. Arnold's photography, check out this video over here. Her secret to reconnecting, oh, listen to me with the frog in my throat. Oh! The secret to photographing people. Thanks once again so much, and I'll see you again soon.