The Importance of Feedback

Feedback is that sometimes unpleasant mechanism that provides the opportunity to improve on work quality and performance. Whether that feedback comes in the form of market forces (client praise or departure) or direct feedback (“I like your work” or “this image has camera shake”) it is one of the most valuable business tools available.

Your work can turn into a hot mess if ongoing quality improvement is not on your daily list of things to do.

My first experience with any form of consistent feedback on my work came when I started posting my work to stock catalogues. As I continued processing and submitting my work for review I received various degrees and qualities of feedback, and due to the nature of that business this came in the form of rejections, which can take a toll psychologically. Thankfully these rejections usually came with clear and specific rejection reasons, and occasionally with corrective recommendations.

The value of this rejection takes a few deep breaths to process, as I found some of my favorite images being rejected. The primary lesson I got from this is that you can like a thing on a personal level, and it can still be below an acceptable threshold of commercial quality. Sentimental attachment to your work is important as it keeps you engaged, but it is essential to keep a sense of reality about the quality of your product if you want to see success. Moments after onboarding that nugget of wisdom, I also accepted that if the industry is identifying a quality shortfall in your product and willing to provide you an opportunity to improve, then that is a service you are lucky to receive.

Since I began doing stock photography work over two years ago, and learning from the feedback I received, I’ve noticed a significant improvement in my work and technical skills. The moral of the story: If you are not receiving feedback on your work, whatever that work is, find a place to get it, because you will be much slower at improving without it.