God, now this is a heavy subject. critism to comments. Well, I am a non pro.... a very humble, digi cam photographer who has some little knowledge about 2d/3d photo softwares since I been working in about 15 diffrent wares for the last 5 years other than that I have no experience whatsoever before coming on here with my photo work. I have learnt a lot here, not with critism but with honest sincere advise by friends. Most of these critism or advise or tips came to me via IM messages. Not only in photography but even when I was posting in the Bryce Gallary,the same used to happen. If someone, expert enough saw some serious flaw in my work or saw some very simple trick to come over my lapses they would send me an IM regarding it and that had helped me a lot. For example, the idea of using the Spray for flowers was sent to me by a friend via IM and since then I have posted many flowers using the Spray and I have noticed that it has given lot of light advantage plus a cool effect to the image so posted. Likewise, very recently another guru in this trade, I almost spelled his nick now... sent me a im telling me how he would have handled the camera in a certain pic shoot and true enough when I considered it, he was right and that is an added information in my head now and whenever I go and shoot flowers his tip will be in my mind and I hope to come out with some nice angles to the flowers I post. As regards critism to the post itself......it's very hard, there are many reasons to it...... when I was new entrant here and I started with bryce I had left a crtism to someones work, only to get a IM from another friend saying , comeon, can you stop your critism? can't you see the person posting is hardly 10 yrs of age and for her age she is doing such a wonderful job and i was like, OH MY GOD!!, why the hell did I not check the background of the nickname that posted?? Why was I so stupid with my loud mouth going on about how the image should have been rendered. I felt highly embarassed and that was the last critic I ever made and I send a due apology to both the persons involved. The reason why I am quoating this is, someone above said it right, this site sets no prior qualification for entry here. Everyone with their free will can participate in posting under any category, they can be pro at various levels which we know not as there is no proper identification of them, Age too is a major consideration, so keeping in view all these factors, Constructive critism of all image is not possible or desireable. However, comments can continue to remain polite and the rating can be more honest. Not all images need to be treated as Excellent, some are good, some are fair and some very interesting.:O)) I wish I could go back and check which Image had this but one of my Bryce work got the first comment as a suggestion and the rest of the comments that followed were debates on that opening remark, some agreed with it, some disagreed and some had a diffrent way to it. My work , per se..... was not looked as a work of art, it was more a debate over the first remark, so , I agree with Nilla over this, once someone sets a little negative tone , most start singing or huming the same tune and the whole idea of the post gets lost. Using the Forum for critism is a good idea, I think I like that. I am a member in a MSN site which is tightassed about the size of the image posted. Anything you post will get critisised to such degree that you may not want to pick your cam again. God, I for one don't want that. Pardon me , but I don't intend to be a photographer, or a pro photographer, no , I will not be covering any marriage event or political campaign or street demonstration, thats not me and my reflex is not so strong nor is this Digi cam smart enough to react quickly when desired. I am just a humble artist who is currently using a Phototool named Digital Camera to work on his 2d skills. Capturing from live what I loved working on a Canvas beyond that I have no distinction as a photographer. I prefer to be a Photo artist than a Photographer and I do not want to be critisised from a Photographers point of view......... does this sound blunt??