Quote - Acadia, I went to art school and a lot of that was taught to us and I try to do that but it jsut seems most people here want the gushing and praising even if they say they want crits.

Yes, that is what some people want.

For me personally I consider the gallery a place for me to post what I've done.  Once it's up there I consider it finished and will only remove it and replace it to fix a flaw in it.  I spend a great amount of time on my art and pay close attention to detail, or try to.  Sometimes I fail in that though and miss something like fingers digging into a dress, hehe

-If you like it, by all means tell me.
-If you hate it, by all means tell me, but don't be rude, but please tell me why you hate it.
-If you notice something like fingers digging into a dress or other such flaws, tell me.
-If it evoked a certain emotion from you,  I'd like to hear what it was. I create my art with a lot of emotion and feeling.
-If you have a suggestion on how I could improve the lighting (my bane), please tell me.
-If the image seems imbalanced, please tell me, but also tell me in what way and offer a potential solution.

• if the image seems pixelated, let me know.
• if I failed at achieving the soft focus camera look, tell me, but also tell me how to go about doing it right.
• are my camera distances screwy? Tell me, but offer a solution.

What I'm not  interested in hearing is what you would have done instead (IE different shadows, different figure, different colour, different car/boat etc).  It's my image so it doesn't matter to me what you would have done in my place.

Art is subjective. I know when I make something I make it to please my eye. It's impossible to make everyone happy, so all I set out to do when I create something is to make me happy. If others happen to like it after the fact, that's just a bonus to me.

I am all for improving my technique, and am very open to people helping me learn better ways to do things like lighting or glowing effect or softer looks or a post worked effect etc.  It's how we learn and grow and get better.

"It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never
able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us.
This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good
heart whatever they might have to say." - Ghandi