The SMUGS Blog

After last month’s successful PhotoWalk through Baltimore’s Federal Hill and Inner Harbor, we met this month to do a constructive critique of some of the pictures taken as well as other member-submitted images.  We had more new members this month so obviously everyone had not participated in the walk.  No worries!  We still had a lot of fun.

It is July so of course there was watermelon as well as yummy cupcakes from Caroline’s Cupcakery.

We started with introductions and welcomed several new members to the group.  Our extremely organized leaders Liz and Ryan had slides labelled, index cards and envelopes numbered and ready for critiques.  Ryan even had mood music playing during the slide show.

After written critiques were done and gathered, we critiqued each picture after the photographer told a little back story behind their image.  We were given the option to not claim the image and have the critique be completely anonymous but everyone generously came forward and claimed their work.

Some images had surprises (“all three people in that image are you?!”), some benefited from a little back story and some, like this image from Marcella Treybig, were just gorgeous and hard to critique.  Members commented that they found this session extremely helpful in not only critiquing their own work but learning what makes  a good image and what can make a good image even better.

After the critiques we discussed some of the latest SmugMug developments like the SmugMug Vault price drop and the web site customizing options.  And then another great SmugMug meeting came to a close.  Luckily it was inside, have you ever been to Baltimore in July?  It’s hot and muggy!

Submitted by the Baltimore SMUG Scribe: Jeff Dayton.

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