Category: Miscellaneous

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Using ChatGPT for pre-critique feedback on your photographs

Why use ChatGPT before peers or tutors see your work

Getting feedback on your photographs from peers or tutors is vital. But showing early drafts can feel risky. First impressions often stick, and sharing undeveloped work can influence how others view your abilities.

Using ChatGPT for an initial critique gives you a private, low-pressure way to improve your images before sharing them with people who will assess you.

  • No judgement – ChatGPT will not form personal opinions about you.
  • Unlimited tries – You can get feedback as often as you need without wearing out goodwill.
  • Focused feedback – You choose which aspects to review: composition, technical quality, narrative, or genre.
  • Wide perspective – ChatGPT has been trained on many photographic styles and can link your work to recognised movements, techniques, or artists.

By addressing obvious weaknesses first, you free your human reviewers to give deeper, more creative feedback. It’s like rehearsing your ideas in private so your public performance is stronger.

There’s good evidence that by engaging in this as a dialogue you will learn more and those lessons will last longer and be more useful too.

How to get the most out of ChatGPT’s feedback

  1. Upload the Best Quality Image You Can
    Use the largest file size allowed to avoid compression artefacts that can mislead critique.
  2. Be Specific About the Feedback You Want
    Don’t just ask, “What do you think?” Instead, ask about composition, mood, exposure, narrative, or a particular creative choice.
  3. Give Context
    Say what you intended, where and how you shot it, and any post-processing done.
  4. Work in Layers
    Start with overall impressions. Then follow up with focused questions on composition, narrative, or technical points.
  5. Ask for Strengths and Improvements
    Balanced feedback is more motivating and more useful.
  6. Iterate
    Apply suggestions, re-upload, and get another round of feedback. This is how real growth happens.

Sample prompt for photograph critique

I am uploading a photograph for critique.
Context: [Briefly explain the subject, location, lighting, genre, intention, and any post-processing.]
Feedback scope: Please give balanced, constructive feedback focusing on:

  1. Overall Impression – mood, emotional impact, and whether it achieves its intended message.
  2. Composition – framing, focal point, balance, use of space, leading lines, cropping suggestions.
  3. Technical Quality – exposure, sharpness, colour balance, contrast, depth of field.
  4. Narrative & Concept – story or idea conveyed, clarity of theme, originality.
  5. Comparative Insight – note any similarities to the style of recognised photographers or movements.
  6. Suggestions for Improvement – at least three practical, specific changes I could try.
    Tone: Please balance strengths and areas for improvement, avoid vague statements, and use plain English.
    Output: Provide feedback in numbered sections matching the scope above.
Categories
Miscellaneous

The psychology of discarding dog shit bags

It is one thing to let your dog roam and simply not bother to pick up its faeces. However, it is harder to understand what is going on in the mind of someone who carries suitable bags, picks up the turd, ties the bag… and then deposits it somewhere nearby but not in the relevant bin. Something far more disturbing is going on. It suggests a cluster of psychological traits and social dynamics in conflict; an incomplete moral performance, in which social pressure, convenience, and internalised norms jostle for dominance.

Here are a few of the psychological issues such a person is facing…

  1. Social Conformity without Internalisation
    The person likely conforms to the visible part of the social norm—picking up the mess—but not to the ethical or environmental rationale behind it. This split suggests extrinsic rather than intrinsic motivation. In other words, they care about being seen to comply but not about doing what is right when unobserved (Ajzen, 1991).
  2. Low Delay of Gratification or Inconvenience Aversion
    Carrying a bag of faeces for any length of time may be perceived as unpleasant. Abandoning it nearby could indicate a low threshold for discomfort or a lack of impulse control. This echoes traits seen in the psychology of littering—where convenience outweighs social or environmental responsibility (De Young, 1986).
  3. Moral Licensing
    The act of picking it up may feel virtuous enough to justify failing to finish the task. This is a form of moral licensing—a self-justifying loophole where people allow themselves unethical behaviour after doing something ‘good’ (Merritt, Effron, & Monin, 2010).
  4. Displacement of Responsibility
    There may be an implicit belief that someone else (e.g., a council worker) will deal with it. This is a diffusion of responsibility common in shared spaces, akin to the bystander effect (Latané & Darley, 1970). The tied bag may act as a symbolic gesture—”I did my part”.
  5. Psychological Distance
    The bag creates a layer of abstraction from the raw excrement. Out of sight, out of mind. Psychologically, it may be less repugnant, thus reducing the moral urgency to dispose of it properly (Trope & Liberman, 2010).
  6. Signalling Conflict
    There’s an odd contradiction in both performing the clean-up and still littering. This could indicate an unresolved tension between public self-image and private laziness or indifference. It is an incomplete form of civic virtue.

So, this behaviour suggests a superficial commitment to public norms, shaped more by appearances and discomfort than by consistent ethics or environmental care.

References

Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50(2), 179–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90020-T

De Young, R. (1986). Some psychological aspects of recycling behavior. Environment and Behavior, 18(4), 435–449. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916586184001

Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help? Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Merritt, A. C., Effron, D. A., & Monin, B. (2010). Moral self-licensing: When being good frees us to be bad. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(5), 344–357. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00263.x

Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2010). Construal-level theory of psychological distance. Psychological Review, 117(2), 440–463. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018963