Chapter 31 — Exercises

Critique is the rare photography skill you can practice without a camera in your hands — though several of these still send you out to shoot, because the best images to critique honestly are your own. The work here is looking and articulating: running the slow-looking route, climbing the four stages, and saying why an image works or fails in words specific enough to act on. Difficulty is marked ⭐ (warm-up), ⭐⭐ (core), ⭐⭐⭐ (stretch). Do the starred and odd-numbered ones at minimum; model critiques for those are in the book's Answers to Selected Exercises. Keep your written critiques in a journal — they become a record of your eye getting sharper.

A reminder of the tools you'll use throughout:

• The slow-looking route (§31.1): first landing → the travel → the edges → the light → brightest/darkest → second look. Verdict last.
• The four stages (§31.2): description (what's literally there) → analysis (how elements relate) → interpretation (grounded meaning) → judgment (the earned verdict).
• Craft vs. taste (§31.3): could a skilled photographer disagree and still be right? Yes = taste. No = craft.
• Intent vs. effect (§31.4): critique the effect (what a stranger sees), not the intent (what you meant).

Part A — Slow looking (Eye Training)

Exercise 31.1 ⭐ — The two-minute look. Pick one photograph — a master image you admire, not your own — and look at it for a full two minutes, timed, doing nothing but looking. Afterward, write down three specific things you noticed after the first ten seconds that you had not seen at first glance. The whole lesson is in how much was invisible to a quick look.

Exercise 31.2 ⭐⭐ — Run the route. Choose any photograph and run the complete slow-looking route from Figure 31.1 in writing: where the eye lands first, where it travels, what's at each of the four edges and the corners, where the light is from, the brightest and darkest points, and what a deliberate second look reveals. Only after all six steps, write a one-sentence verdict. Notice that the verdict feels different — earned — when it comes last.

Exercise 31.3 ⭐⭐ — Edge patrol. Find five of your own recent photographs and examine only the four edges and corners of each — nothing else. For every image, note anything touching, half-cut, or distracting at the edges (a bright object, an awkwardly cropped limb, a line leading the eye out). Tally how many of your five have an edge problem you never noticed. (For most photographers, it's most of them.)

Exercise 31.4 ⭐⭐⭐ — First-landing test. Show three of your photographs to two different people. For each image, before they say anything, ask them to point to where their eye landed first. Compare their answer to where you wanted the eye to land. When those disagree, you've found a real craft problem — the image is directing attention somewhere other than you intended. Write the fix for each mismatch.

Part B — The four-stage vocabulary (Read the Frame)

Exercise 31.5 ⭐ — Describe only. Pick any photograph and write only its description — the objective inventory of what's literally in the frame (subject, placement, light, tones), with zero analysis, interpretation, or opinion. This is harder than it sounds; the urge to leap to meaning is strong. If a single evaluative word ("beautiful," "sad," "cluttered") sneaks in, cross it out and re-state it as fact.

Exercise 31.6 ⭐⭐ — All four stages, one image. Take one photograph and write a full four-stage critique: description → analysis → interpretation → judgment, clearly labeled, in that order. The constraint that makes it work: every interpretation claim must point back to something concrete you named in the description or analysis. If you can't anchor an interpretation to the frame, delete it — it's projection.

Exercise 31.7 ⭐⭐ — Critique Figure 31.3 ("Bus stop, 7 a.m."). Re-read the Described Photograph "Bus stop, 7 a.m." (Figure 31.3) in §31.2. Write your own four-stage critique of it from scratch, without looking at the worked version that follows it in the chapter. Then compare. Where did your analysis or interpretation differ, and is your reading defensible from the evidence in the description? (More than one valid interpretation can exist — defend yours.)

Exercise 31.8 ⭐⭐⭐ — Judgment last, and shortest. Write four-stage critiques of three different images, and impose a rule: your judgment must be the shortest section, no more than two sentences, and it must follow naturally from everything above it. If you can't keep the verdict short, it's a sign your description, analysis, and interpretation didn't do enough work. Diagnose which floor was thin.

Part C — Craft vs. taste (Read the Frame)

Exercise 31.9 ⭐ — Sort your reactions. Find five images you have an immediate reaction to (in a feed, a book, a friend's set). For each, write your gut reaction, then label it craft or taste using the test: could a skilled photographer disagree with you and still be right? Be honest about how many of your "this is bad" reactions are actually taste.

Exercise 31.10 ⭐⭐ — Translate taste into craft. Take three reactions you sorted as taste in Exercise 31.9. For each, write the version of the note you could legitimately make as craft — the genuinely fixable, intent-violating problem, if there is one — versus the part that remains pure preference. Some will have a craft kernel inside the taste; some will be taste all the way down. Tell them apart.

Exercise 31.11 ⭐⭐ — Catch the taste laundering. Here are five critique statements. Identify which are honest craft notes and which are taste laundering (a preference dressed as a rule), and rewrite the laundered ones as honest preferences: (a) "You should never center your subject." (b) "The highlights on the forehead are clipped to pure white with no detail." (c) "Vignettes are amateurish." (d) "The horizon tilts about two degrees with no apparent reason." (e) "Real photographers don't use heavy saturation."

Exercise 31.12 ⭐⭐⭐ — Intent flips the verdict. Describe one photograph (yours or a Described Photograph you write) that contains a feature which would be a craft flaw under one intent and a deliberate strength under another — e.g. a blown highlight, a centered subject, deep shadow swallowing detail, or motion blur. Write both readings: "if the intent was X, this is a flaw because…; if the intent was Y, this is a success because…" This proves you can't judge craft without first reading intent.

Part D — Critiquing your own work (Shoot This / Reflection)

Exercise 31.13 ⭐ — The month-ago stranger. Scroll back to photographs you made at least a month ago — far enough that the emotional cloud has lifted. Pick one and critique it through all four stages as if a stranger made it. Notice how much more honestly you can see your month-ago work than your work from this week. That gap is the intent-cloud, made visible.

Exercise 31.14 ⭐⭐ — Critique the one you love. Choose the image in your portfolio-in-progress that you are most proud of and emotionally invested in. Write a full four-stage critique, with one ironclad rule: you may not reference the experience of making it (the hike, the wait, the cold, the meaning). Judge only the effect a stranger would receive. Name its one most fixable weakness honestly. This is the hardest exercise in the chapter and the most valuable.

Exercise 31.15 ⭐⭐ — Two things it does well. Choose the image in your portfolio you dislike most. Force yourself to name two specific things it does well — in craft terms, anchored to the frame — before naming what fails. Despair hides the fixable truth just as effectively as pride does; this exercise pries it back open.

Exercise 31.16 ⭐⭐⭐ — Intent vs. effect, written side by side. Pick one of your photographs. In the left column, write what you intended — the feeling, the subject, the statement you had in mind. In the right column, write what the photograph actually does to a viewer with none of your context. Where the two columns diverge is your exact homework: either the image failed to carry the intent (a craft problem to fix) or the intent was never strong enough to carry (a deeper rethink). Name which.

Part E — Giving and receiving critique (Reflection)

Exercise 31.17 ⭐ — Strength first, specifically. Take any photograph (a friend's, a stranger's online) and write one specific strength — named precisely enough that the photographer would know exactly what to keep and repeat. Ban the words "nice," "great," and "good." Generic praise is as useless as generic criticism; specificity is the whole gift.

Exercise 31.18 ⭐⭐ — Ask before you advise. Find a photograph online and, before critiquing it, write the question you'd ask the photographer first: "What were you going for here?" Then write two different critiques of the same image — one assuming intent A, one assuming intent B — and show how the same frame earns a different critique under each intent. This is why you ask before you advise.

Exercise 31.19 ⭐⭐ — Image, not person. Here are three blunt critiques aimed at the person. Rewrite each to critique the photograph instead, and make it specific and actionable: (a) "You don't know how to expose." (b) "You have no eye for composition." (c) "This is lazy."

Exercise 31.20 ⭐⭐⭐ — Receive a real one. Post one of your photographs somewhere it will get genuine feedback (a critique group, a forum, a trusted friend), or ask three people directly. Your only job is to receive: for each note, ask a clarifying question instead of explaining what you meant. Afterward, write down which notes were craft (and you'll act on) versus taste (and you'll keep your choice), and whether any note came from more than one person — the pattern that signals a real, intent-defeating effect.

Part F — Interleaved (mixing prior chapters)

Exercise 31.21 ⭐⭐ — Critique with the composition grammar (Ch. 6). Write a four-stage critique of any image in which your analysis stage explicitly names at least three composition principles from Chapter 6 at work or violated: power points, leading lines, visual weight, balance/symmetry, framing/layering, or negative space. The grammar of Part II is your analysis vocabulary; this exercise welds them together.

Exercise 31.22 ⭐⭐ — Critique a color decision (Ch. 7). Find a photograph whose color is doing real work. In a four-stage critique, dedicate the analysis and interpretation stages to color: name the relationship (complementary, analogous, monochromatic), say what it does to the eye and the mood, and decide whether the color choice is craft (serving the image) or taste (your preference). Tie your reading to the color wheel, not just feeling.

Exercise 31.23 ⭐⭐ — Read a black-and-white frame (Ch. 8). Critique a monochrome photograph with special attention to tonal separation: where do adjacent areas stay distinct, and where do they merge into one shape? Use the Zone System language to place the brightest and darkest points. Then judge whether the conversion added meaning (Chapter 28's standard) or merely removed color.

Exercise 31.24 ⭐⭐⭐ — The decisive-moment critique (Ch. 10). Critique a photograph of human action or life. In the interpretation stage, address the moment specifically: was this the decisive instant, or a fraction early/late? What would a frame a half-second on either side have lost? This forces you to critique timing as rigorously as composition — the hardest thing to judge and the easiest to feel.

Exercise 31.25 ⭐⭐⭐ — Critique a documentary image's responsibility (Ch. 17 → Ch. 32). Find a documentary or street photograph of a real person in a vulnerable situation. Run a four-stage critique, then add a fifth consideration that's coming in Chapter 32: does the image portray the subject with dignity, and what might the photographer have owed them? Notice how reading an image well opens straight onto the ethics of making it. Write where craft critique ends and ethical critique begins.

Part G — Recreate It / Build the practice

Exercise 31.26 ⭐⭐ — The weekly master read, started. Begin the standing practice from §31.6: choose one great photograph by a photographer you admire and write a full four-stage critique of it. Date it. This is week one of a habit; if you do nothing else from this chapter, do this, weekly, for a year. (See further-reading.md for where to find images and whom to study.)

Exercise 31.27 ⭐⭐ — Recreate, then critique your recreation. Find a composition you admire (a Described Photograph in this book, or a master image), shoot your own version with your own subject, and then write a four-stage critique comparing your result to the original. Where does yours fall short, in craft terms, and why? Recreation plus critique teaches more than either alone.

Exercise 31.28 ⭐⭐⭐ — Start (or convene) a critique group. Recruit one to four other photographers and hold a single critique session using the chapter's ground rules: maker stays quiet while others read; run the four stages, not verdicts; name strengths as specifically as weaknesses; separate craft from taste out loud. Afterward, write what the outside eyes saw in your work that you could not see yourself. One session will likely show you more than a week of solo looking.

Stretch challenge

Exercise 31.29 ⭐⭐⭐ — The 150-word self-critique (your Portfolio Checkpoint, refined). Complete the chapter's Portfolio Checkpoint — a 150-word four-stage critique of one of your own portfolio images — and then do something demanding: set it aside for one week, and on the eighth day re-critique the same image cold, without rereading your first attempt. Compare the two critiques. What did a week of distance let you see that you couldn't on day one? That difference is the entire argument of §31.4, proven in your own hand. Keep both versions in your journal as your first dated record of your developing eye.

Model critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises appear in the book's "Answers to Selected Exercises." Try each yourself first — in critique, the looking is the lesson, and reading someone else's verdict before forming your own only trains you to borrow eyes instead of growing your own.