by Slawomir Kowalczyk 

My name is Slawomir Kowalczyk
I live in Poland and I’m 58 years old.
I started my photographic adventure on 1X in 2009. 

The portal drew my attention by its very high quality photos.
For the first period, I was looking at the photos and tried to create images which could compete with these excellent images posted on 1X.


But my serious illness and very exhausting work held me from continuing my passion for photography with proper attention.  It was only in 2015 when I returned to photography at a level that I think would allow me to exhibit photos at the appropriate level at 1X.

This photo is still popular today, although it has not been published.

'Tatra Mountains, sun, snow and clouds.'

Unfortunately, the next photos, apart from a fairly warm reception by the photographers' colleagues, also did not get published. I felt some signs of discouragement and began to recognize more differences between my photos and the ones accepted on 1X.
I came to the conclusion that I still had to invest a lot of work in my photography to be successful here. 
At the end of 2018 I decided to show some of my photos again.

Personally I was considering these photos of higher quality, but they were still not noticed positively by the curators. The audience of my photos was no less noticeable and opinions of other photographers became appreciative. But still no success in curation…

I took a different path on my way to success. Self-study was not enough to succeed on 1X.

The times of COVID-19 pandemic surprisingly helped me in this case. I had more spare time due to my remote workplace and I didn't have to travel, I simply had more time for photography.

I started to post new images.  Those which were not published I posted in the 1x Critique section, describing the photo and asking for help in analysing it.

The first photo I sent to the critique section was the one on top of this article.
Read full critique here.

It was commented in a very interesting and clear way by Johanes Januar. 
These first remarks allowed me to review my approach for the next shots. 

For several months, I had very interesting interactions with the senior critics and I noticed that my photos were well seen and commented by the group of critics. Obviously, they recognized the potential in my photos and gave me excellent suggestions on what to do to improve their quality.

The people who took the time to help me out were: Mike Kreiten, Daniel Springgay, Theo Luycx, Steven T, Johanes Januar, Greg Barsh, and Norman Gabitzsch.

Working together on the pictures gave me a lot of inspiration for some changes to my work.  The Senior Critics showed me what I didn't notice before and that was the most important to me.

My photos got better and better. My interest in photography is in many genres, so in my gallery I wanted to show photos ranging from landscape photos, through architecture, up to creative edits.

Below are examples of discussed and improved photos:

'Tatra Mountains' 

Here my key conclusion was to analyse photos of other photographers on the 1X featuring dark photos using strong contrasts. In addition, the comments helped me to technically improve my photography.
Read the full critique here.  
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'Castle in Moszna, Poland'

 
This photo was previously in colour reversed to BW.
It's one of my few BW works and I was curious what others thought about it.
And here is the link to the critique.
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'Ice land.'

 
For this work I received many encouraging words of critics and a member of 1X, Giuseppe Satriani, mainly good advice concerning the composition.
It seemed to me that success with this photo came very close. Unfortunately it didn't work at the end.
See the response of the senior critics here.
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'Fishing for Glory'  - PUBLISHED

 
My little victory!!!
n this work, I concentrated on a calm mood, a little story, simplification, put focus on both, the side and main subject. The excellent and subtle advice finally got me published.  
You can read the different responses from the senior critics here.
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Sometimes I still have moments of doubt (you can see it in some of my responses to the critics) but thanks to the support of these people, I continued to work on my pictures.

I have to mention that I also receive great support from fellow photographers, incl. Fabiola Amidei and Giuseppe Satriani.  They are very experienced photographers and great colleagues.  
Their feedback was very important and helpful.
They even sent their comments and suggestions by email. Their view was very accurate and straight-on.

I think the whole 1X community is a very interesting and diverse group of people from all over the world. Each of us is different, but we learn from each other not only by looking at the photos, but by talking about them.

Critique is one of the forums to discuss with each other, probably the most intense place on 1x. We get to know various techniques, new views on photography, new trends. We improve our skills and our workflow to a level every photographer dreams of.

I started to fulfil my dreams – and I finally became a published photographer ;-)

Slawomir Kowalczyk