Hi everyone,
I'm fairly new at photography, so I'm trying to learn from a lot of sources; books, journals, YouTube videos, but mostly just by looking at other photos. However, there is only so much you can do with this approach without investing heavy amounts of time into it. I like the critique section on 1x, but it feels more like a friendly advice from a friend than a serious critique you would receive from a judge or a professional curator. There are exceptions of course and with a bit of luck you can get phenomenal responses, but those are far apart.
I propose a system of paid critique, where a user would pay a certain amount in exchange for a serious critique from a serious photographer. Curators at 1x would of course be ideal, as they have extensive knowledge. I suppose most wouldn't mind if they received a fair share in exchange.
I don't want to speculate on the price, but I wouldn't mind paying 5-10€ per critique. It's "cheap" enough that I could afford it with a couple of my best photos, but it's expensive enough so that I wouldn't pay for just any and every photo that I make.
The problem I see with the whole idea is that certain people would probably expect (probably even demand) to have their photos accepted on 1x once they follow the critiques advice. I don't see how you can get around this, but I'm hoping such concerns don't outweigh the major benefits for the rest of us.
