One of the unique features at 1x is the  Critique Forum, where members can submit their images to request feedback and advice from the entire community. Everyone is welcome to participate in both giving and receiving critique, and sixteen volunteer Senior Critics work to ensure that all submitted images receive thoughtful and helpful responses.

To strengthen and enrich the Critique Forum, we are introducing a new feature: 
"Guest Critics (“Expert eyes”)".

Every month, two well-known 1x photographers will lend their “expert eyes” to members, providing new opinions, expertise across a diversity of genres, and photographic wisdom and insight.

We are proud to present you the Guest Critics for April:  Jose C. Lobato  and  Martin Zalba.
 

José C. Lobato 

José considers photography an essential part of life. He believes that anywhere and at any moment he can find a scene that tells him something. He’s a passionate street photographer with a strong style regarding processing deliberate black & white artworks. José always took photography very serious. But the change to a digital workflow opened new worlds for him and made his work more versatile, as he said. José sees processing as method to visually enhance what he was pursuing.

His style has been described by  Yvette Depaepe  in the  1x magazine as soulful and moody. 

José likes B&W and the somehow dark, even mysterious images. As many photographers he tried many genres before he found what he prefers, what he describes as “urban landscapes”. He makes use of his hunting gene, which wasn’t satisfied by macros, portraits or landscapes he did before. José is a constant learner in photography, he watches photographs, read books, visits exhibitions, reads interviews of great photographers (and not so great or famous, as he said) and from all that he learns something. The work on 1x is not exactly everything he does in photography, it’s rather what he likes most. José still does landscapes, marinas, and everything that can be captured when travelling new places. He also shoots portraits and still lifes, so he’s the perfect candidate for our experiment!

Although José considers himself more of a learner than a teacher of photography, we probably learn from José’s viewpoint on many genres, and he will experience what teaching feels like…

Martin Zalba

Martin is also an amateur Spanish photographer, and for Martin, photography, together with music composition and painting, prompts a philosophical reflection that he is, „a hunter of the beautiful things”. 

According to Martin, „Photography is a vehicle that helps me travel through my inner world and get to know myself better, discovering what’s behind the light and the shadows.” Many 1x members may be familiar with Martin through his  interview  in the 1x magazine, or through his personal reflections about photography featured in 1x. The latter article also introduces a video presentation from Martin (featuring his music as well as his photography!) about one of his favourite genres, night photography.

More broadly, Martin is interested not only in landscapes, but also urban photography, wildlife, portraits, still life, and more recently, infrared photography. Martin enjoys sharing his knowledge and experience in a variety of ways, and we look forward to being part of that process has he joins the senior critic team this month!

 
We have encouraged José and Martin to critique any image that moves them for any reason - art, teaching opportunity, emotion, and more. While there is no guarantee that José or Martin will write a critique on a specific image, we know their participation will enrich and diversify the critique forum and the 1x community at large.

When submitting to critique, please remember three important guidelines:

1.  Be specific about how the image was captured (EXIF data), processed, and the underlying questions (e.g. composition, processing)

2. Try not to delete images once they’ve been posted to critique since it’s a cumulative resource for the community at large

3. Consider giving as well as receiving critique; it’s one of the best ways to develop one’s own pair of expert eyes!

We look forward to a lively and stimulating exchange on your work!
The SC team and our guests, Martin and José C.