Imagine this. You spend all day (okay, like 20 minutes) making dinner for your husband and after he tries it he says, “this sucks” and walks away. You are obviously devastated. Yeah, the pasta was a bit salty and you used the wrong sauce because it was what you had, but you worked hard on it and he just dismissed the fact that the pasta was perfectly al dente. 

I’m sure any husband reading this knows that that situation will end in a very cold evening. 

So, what do you do when your husband’s photography sucks? Telling him not just that you don’t personally like the image, but that it actually looks like a toddler took it? Here are 5 tips to help avoid devastating your resident photographer. 

1. Find something about it that you do like. The whole thing can’t be terrible. Find the one thing that shows promise. Is it the composition, that it is black and white, or even if you just like how there is a flower in the bottom right corner that looks pretty. Remember how your pasta was al dente, but he didn’t mention that? Start with the thing they did right. Then we can move on to how it is not good.

2. Ask them what they think. Nine times out of ten, if I ask my husband what he thinks of his photo, he will point out exactly the same things that I was going to say. Except now, I can just agree, rather than having to point them out myself. His ego is fragile, keep it intact for as long as possible. 

3. Pretend like you actually know what you are talking about. At some point, if you stay in the relationship long enough, you will begin to understand some of the terminology and can talk intelligently about what you think, in their language. Until then, fake it. He might have noticed that the pasta was perfectly cooked, but didn’t know there was a word for it so he just avoided saying anything. You don’t have to say the composition is off or that the foreground is too busy and distracts from the background. “The tree feels awkward in the middle of the picture” or “There is too much happening down here” get the same ideas across but you don’t have to know their lingo.

4. Compare it to their other work. Your husband is comparing his work to people like Peter Lik, but you should not. If your husband is anything like mine, he likes to revisit the same places and shoot the same genre of pictures, ie. foggy forests and waterfalls. If you don’t like the photo he took this time of a foggy forest, tell him why you like the other one better. Was the tree he chose this time too scraggly? Did the tree last time have better texture? These will help him grow and know what to look for next time. 

5. Just tell him it sucks. If the photo truly looks like a toddler did it, tell them. We have the unique ability to view images critically, because we have paid attention and have learned a few things in the past few years, and to view images as potential buyers. So as a buyer, tell him it sucks because he will thank you for not wasting time, money, and energy on a photo no one would ever want.