request a critique

You already know the compliments aren't helping. "Love this!" and "stunning shot!" feel nice for about five seconds, then leave you exactly where you started: not knowing whether the photograph actually works, or why.

I built a tool that walks a reviewer through the same rigorous process I use with my own photography students: describing what's actually in the frame, forming a real interpretation, checking it against what you actually intended, and only then weighing whether the photograph succeeds. It takes them about ten minutes and produces a real, specific report -- not just a reaction.

What this asks of them

Whoever you ask will need about ten minutes, your photograph as a plain image file (no title or artist statement attached, so it doesn't color their read), and a webcam so the tool can gauge where their eyes actually go. At the end, they'll get a downloadable report to send back to you: what they saw, what they think it means, how well they think it succeeds, and a heatmap of where their attention actually lingered.