Did Picasso Need Your Approval?

From the Editor: Welcome to Issue V

This issue started with my wife being a little silly. We were talking about photography, opinions, and how easy it is to get wrapped up in whether other people approve of what you make when she threw out something like, “Did Picasso need your permission?”

I laughed. Then I thought about it for a second. And annoyingly, she had a point.

Photography can make us incredibly aware of other people’s opinions. We post a picture and immediately wonder who liked it. We ask for critique and sometimes end up changing things we actually preferred before anyone said a word. We see another photographer getting attention for a certain look and start wondering whether our own work should move in that direction too.

That little joke stuck with me because there is something underneath it worth taking seriously.

No, Picasso did not need everybody’s approval. Neither do you.

But that does not mean criticism is useless, or that every choice we make is automatically brilliant because “art is subjective.” A much more interesting line exists between learning from other people and handing them control over your own taste.

That is what I wanted to dig into with this issue. And yes, my wife gets credit for the title.

Jonathan Charles
📷 Shoot What Matters.

Featured Issue: Did Picasso Need Your Approval?

Imagine finishing a photograph you genuinely love. You spent time with it. You noticed something worth photographing, worked through the composition, chose the light and focus, decided what to include and what to leave outside the frame, and eventually arrived at an image that feels right to you. Maybe it is quiet. Maybe it is dark. Maybe the subject is small in the frame. Maybe you deliberately let the shadows disappear. Maybe the horizon is nowhere near a rule-of-thirds line. Whatever the choices were, you made them for a reason.

Then you show the photograph to someone else. “I don’t really like it", they said. That can sting more than photographers like to admit.

We can pretend we make photographs entirely for ourselves and never care what anyone thinks, but most of us care at least a little. We post photographs because we want someone to see them. We enter contests because we want someone to judge them. We ask for critiques because we want another set of eyes. Even when we do not ask, social media has conveniently installed a little scoreboard beneath our photographs to tell us how much approval they received. That can slowly change the way we make pictures. So let me ask you a ridiculous question that is not ridiculous at all.

Did Picasso need your approval?

Of course, you are allowed to dislike Picasso's works. You can stand in front of one of his paintings and wonder what everyone else sees. Someone beside you may think it is extraordinary. Neither reaction changes the fact that the work exists because an artist made choices about what he wanted to create. It is as simple as that.

Photography deserves some of that same freedom.

Your photograph does not have to be liked by everyone who sees it. It does not have to match another photographer’s taste, follow the current editing fashion, perform well on social media, or satisfy the preferences of someone who would have made a completely different picture. That sounds liberating. It is also more complicated than it sounds. Because “I don’t need your approval” can become wisdom, or it can become an excuse. Learning the difference is where things get interesting.

Not Everyone Has to Like Your Photograph

Photography puts us in an unusual position because the camera records the real world with enough familiarity that people often feel comfortable telling us how that world should have been photographed. Someone looking at a painting may accept unusual colors, strange proportions, or an intentionally distorted scene as part of the artist’s interpretation. Show that same person a photograph, and suddenly you may hear that you should have brightened the shadows, cropped differently, blurred the background more, moved the subject, straightened something, or used a different lens. Sometimes they are right. Sometimes they simply would have made a different photograph. Those are not the same thing.

Suppose you photograph a person standing alone beneath an enormous sky and deliberately make that person tiny in the frame. Someone may tell you to crop tighter because “you can barely see the subject.” Their observation is accurate. Their proposed correction may completely destroy the photograph you intended to make. Perhaps the small figure was the point. Perhaps the entire photograph was about scale, solitude, distance, or the feeling of being overwhelmed by the landscape.

The other photographer may still prefer a tighter portrait. They are allowed to. You are allowed to keep yours. This is one of the harder lessons in photography because improvement usually requires feedback, yet artistic growth eventually requires enough confidence to disagree with some of it.

Popular Is Not the Same as Good

Social media has complicated this enormously because it gives us immediate numerical feedback on creative work. One photograph receives a hundred likes. Another gets twelve. It is incredibly easy to conclude that the first photograph must be better.

Maybe it is.

Or perhaps the first one had a smiling face, a dramatic sunset, bright color, a cute animal, a familiar subject, an easier composition, a better posting time, or simply reached more people. The second photograph may have been quieter, stranger, darker, more demanding, or less immediately understandable. A heart button measures a reaction. It does not fully evaluate a photograph.

That distinction matters because photographers can unconsciously begin adjusting their work toward whatever receives the easiest approval. Colors become more intense because colorful photographs get attention. Every landscape becomes dramatic. Every portrait gets brighter. Every background gets blurrier. Every photograph starts trying to win the same competition.

Eventually, you may become very good at making photographs that others are likely to click on, while growing less certain about what you actually like. There is nothing wrong with wanting people to enjoy your work. There is nothing wrong with learning what connects with an audience either, particularly when photography is part of your business. The danger comes when approval quietly becomes the primary criterion for making photographs.

At some point you have to be able to look at a photograph that did poorly and still know why you believe in it.

“Art Is Subjective” Is Not a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card

Now we need to deal with the other extreme. A photographer posts an image for critique. The subject is accidentally soft, a bright object near the edge is pulling the eye away, the horizon is noticeably crooked, and a tree appears to be growing directly out of someone’s head. Several people point these things out.

The photographer replies, “Well, art is subjective.” Come on.

Yes, people experience art differently. Personal taste absolutely matters. No mathematical formula can determine whether every photograph is good or bad. But subjectivity doesn't mean our choices have no consequences, and it doesn't prevent us from examining whether a photograph accomplished what we intended.

An accidentally missed focus point is different from deliberate softness. A crooked horizon you never noticed is different from deliberately tilting the frame to create instability or energy. A distracting bright object you overlooked differs from a bright object intentionally placed to create tension. The finished pixels may sometimes look similar. The thinking behind them is completely different.

That is why artistic freedom becomes more useful as your photographic understanding grows. Breaking a convention intentionally requires recognizing the convention, understanding what it normally accomplishes, and deciding that another choice serves the photograph better. Otherwise, you are not really breaking a rule. You may simply not have noticed the problem.

Intention Changes the Conversation

This is where photography critique becomes much more productive. Instead of asking only, “Do you like this?” try considering a much better question: “Does this photograph accomplish what I wanted it to accomplish?” That changes everything.

Imagine you deliberately create a dark portrait because you want the person to emerge from shadow. Someone tells you the face would look better if you raised the exposure two stops. Before changing anything, go back to your intention. Were you trying to create a bright, welcoming portrait and accidentally underexposed it? Then the criticism may have identified a genuine failure. Were you intentionally creating mystery, restraint, or tension with darkness? Raising the exposure may technically reveal more information while making the photograph less successful. The criticism did not become useless. It simply needs context.

The same applies to composition. Someone suggests placing the subject on a third. Fine. Why? What would that change? Would it improve balance, create useful space, strengthen movement, or clarify the photograph? Or are we moving the subject because somebody memorized the rule of thirds years ago and feels uncomfortable whenever something lands in the middle?

A good critique should eventually get past “I like” and “I don’t like.” It should help reveal what the photograph is doing.

Learn to Separate a Weakness From a Preference

This may be one of the most useful skills a developing photographer can build. When someone criticizes your photograph, try to determine whether they have identified a weakness or expressed a preference.

A weakness interferes with what the photograph is trying to accomplish. Perhaps the viewer cannot find the subject because three brighter elements compete for attention. Maybe the shutter speed created motion blur that undermines the detail you intended to show. Perhaps the photograph feels cramped because an important object collides with the frame edge. Maybe the color balance is so distracting that it overwhelms the mood you wanted.

Those observations deserve serious consideration. Preference is different. “I like warmer edits.” “I would have used a longer lens.” “I prefer portraits where people look at the camera.” “I like brighter shadows.” “I would crop that panoramic.” None of those statements is automatically wrong. They simply tell you something about the viewer.

One of the biggest traps in photography critique is accepting someone else’s preference as a technical correction. That doesn't mean you should get defensive whenever somebody suggests a change. Quite the opposite. Listen carefully. Try to understand what they are seeing. There may be a lesson hiding inside a suggestion you ultimately reject. You can learn from criticism without surrendering authorship.

Technical Excellence and Artistic Success Are Different Things

Photography has measurable qualities, which can make us overly comfortable judging everything technically. We can examine noise, sharpness, dynamic range, clipping, focus accuracy, lens performance, chromatic aberration, resolution, and a thousand other characteristics. Those things matter. They are also not the photograph.

A perfectly sharp image can be perfectly forgettable. A technically imperfect photograph can become the one you remember for the rest of your life. Think about a photograph of someone you love who is no longer here. Perhaps focus was slightly off. Maybe the camera used too high an ISO. The highlights clipped. The composition could have been better. You probably aren't throwing it away because somebody on a photography forum noticed noise at 200 percent. Its success is being measured by something else.

That is an extreme example, but the principle extends much further. A street photograph may succeed because of a gesture that lasted half a second. A wildlife image may capture extraordinary behavior despite imperfect light. A portrait may reveal something honest even though the background is messier than you would normally accept.

Technical skill expands your ability to create what you intend. It gives you control and increases your odds of bringing the photograph home successfully. Camera Dates certainly isn't going to tell you that technique doesn't matter. But technique is a servant. It is not the reason the photograph exists.

Critique Should Make You Think, Not Obey

One of the healthiest ways to receive photography feedback is to stop treating critique as a list of corrections. Someone tells you the image needs more contrast. Do not immediately move the contrast slider. Ask why they felt that way. Perhaps the subject is not separating from the background. Good observation. Now you have options. Contrast may be one solution. A local adjustment might be better. Perhaps the composition could have prevented the problem at capture. Maybe the low contrast is actually essential to the quiet mood, and you decide not to change anything. The critique still helped because it made you examine the photograph more carefully. That is what good feedback should do.

The same principle applies when several people make the same observation. Do not automatically assume that majority opinion establishes photographic truth, but pay attention. When multiple independent viewers become confused in the same place, there may be useful information there. Perhaps you intended the photograph to feel ambiguous. Fine. But now you know the ambiguity is real rather than merely something you imagined while editing. Feedback becomes data. You remain the photographer.

The Hardest Opinion to Develop Is Your Own

Beginners naturally borrow taste. We look at photographs we admire. We watch tutorials. We imitate editing styles. We learn composition rules. We follow photographers whose work feels impossibly good and try to understand what they are doing. There is nothing wrong with any of that. I would argue that imitation and influence are unavoidable parts of learning almost any creative skill. The trouble comes when we never move beyond borrowed judgment. Eventually you need to know what you respond to.

Do you like photographs with deep shadows or open detail? Do you prefer order or chaos? Are you drawn toward quiet scenes or dramatic ones? Do you like people looking directly at the camera or disappearing into their environment? Does perfect sharpness matter to you? Do you prefer saturated color, restrained color, monochrome, enormous landscapes, tiny details, formal compositions, strange compositions, humor, melancholy, movement, stillness? There are no correct answers. And your answers will probably change.

That is part of developing a photographic voice. Style is not necessarily something you announce one morning and then force onto every image. It develops as thousands of small preferences become recognizable over time. You discover what you like partly by paying attention to what you refuse to change.

Sometimes, Someone Else Sees What You Cannot

All of this also calls for humility. We can become attached to photographs for reasons the viewer cannot possibly know. Maybe making the photograph required waking at 3:30 in the morning, hiking four miles, standing in freezing rain, and waiting two hours for five seconds of light. That experience matters to you. The viewer sees none of it. They see the photograph.

That can make outside criticism incredibly valuable because other people don't carry the memory of what it took to create the image. They can sometimes see the finished frame more clearly than we can. This is why the lesson cannot simply be “stop caring what people think.” Sometimes you should care very much. The trick is learning what to do with the opinion after you hear it.

Ask whether the criticism identifies something you failed to notice. Ask whether changing it would strengthen what you were actually trying to communicate. Ask whether the person understands the kind of photograph you were trying to make. Then make your own decision. Confidence in photography does not mean assuming you are always right. It means being willing to examine the question without automatically surrendering the answer.

Not Every Photograph Needs the Same Audience

Another freedom is worth remembering: not every photograph needs to be for everybody.

A professional portrait photographer creating images for a client has responsibilities that are different from someone wandering through a city making personal street photographs. A wedding photographer cannot simply ignore the couple because artistic freedom struck during the ceremony. A commercial photographer has a client, a purpose, and often a very specific audience.

Context matters. But personal photography gives you enormous freedom.

Some photographs might be made primarily for your family. Some may be intended for other photographers. Some may exist because they document a place important to you. Some may be experimental. Some may be weird. Some may never leave your hard drive. Some might mean almost nothing to anyone else and everything to you. That does not make them failures.

The Internet has encouraged us to treat every photograph as a tiny public performance. Make it. Post it. Count the response. Photography existed long before that scoreboard. You are allowed to make photographs that simply belong to you.

Make Work Specific Enough That Someone Might Disagree

Something strange happens when you try to please everybody: your choices become safer. Safe exposure. Safe crop. Safe composition. Safe colors. Safe subject. Nothing objectionable. Nothing strange. Nothing particularly difficult to understand. And sometimes nothing particularly memorable.

The more specific your choices, the greater the chance somebody will dislike them. Deep shadows will bother someone. Unusual framing will bother someone. Grain will bother someone. Heavy negative space, muted colors, blur, strange perspective, centered composition, off-center composition, imperfect faces, difficult subjects, or unconventional processing will all eventually bother somebody.

Good.

Not because annoying people is the goal. It is not. But disagreement sometimes means you actually made a decision strong enough to notice. You are developing taste. That requires accepting the possibility that somebody else's taste will be different.

So, Did Picasso Need Your Approval?

No.

And neither do you.

That does not mean the answer is to stop listening, dismiss every critique, or hide behind “art is subjective” whenever someone points out a real weakness. Photography still asks something from us. We should know our craft well enough to recognize mistakes, understand why certain choices work, and remain open to the possibility that somebody else may notice something we missed.

Good feedback deserves consideration, especially when the same concern keeps surfacing. Listen carefully. Ask what a suggested change would actually improve. Decide whether the criticism exposes a weakness in the photograph or simply reflects how someone else would have made it. Sometimes you will change the image. Sometimes you will leave it exactly as it is. Both can be the right answer.

The goal is not to become immune to other people’s opinions. It is to become secure enough in your own judgment that those opinions become information instead of instructions. That takes time.

Your taste will keep developing. Your technical knowledge will keep growing. You will make better decisions, change your mind, defend some choices, abandon others, and probably look back at old favorites very differently a few years from now. That is not inconsistency. That is growth.

Eventually, you begin to understand that confidence in photography is not the same thing as certainty. You do not need to believe every photograph you make is brilliant. You only need to know why you made the choices you made, be willing to examine them honestly, and trust yourself enough to stand behind the ones that still feel right after the noise dies down. And somewhere along the way, someone is going to dislike a photograph you love. That is okay. They are allowed to see it differently. You are still allowed to make it.

Coming soon: On Wednesday, the Issue V Camera Date will take this idea out of the article and put it into practice. You will make photographs with your own intent in mind, then look at them honestly and separate what is truly not working from what simply may not be someone else’s taste.

For now, keep making the work that feels like yours.

Shoot What Matters

Jonathan Charles
Camera Dates