A topic that has occupied many photographers and frequently resurfaces in my seminars is how we judge our photos. This is where everyone struggles. This is where they seek my help. First of all, criteria are gradually established over time and through life experiences. They never come from a single lesson. Criteria primarily start from the photos we have loved. In other words, we create in our minds an imaginary museum consisting of the photographs that we liked, that moved us, that made us become photography. This museum is complemented by all the works of art that have contributed to our artistic and spiritual cultivation over time, whether they are music, theatre, cinema, or painting, they accompany us and become our inspiration and influences. As these influences multiply, a common space is conquered that exists in all these influences, and thus, the more these influences are, the more personal and our own this space becomes. If we assume that a person had seen only one photograph in their life, they would consider that photograph to be the standard and would make all their own according to that standard. The more things one sees and admires, the more they expand the scale of their criteria. At the same time, however, criteria also come from things outside of art, which are values that each of us has shaped in our life. Values, for example, where simplicity when achieved is more complex than the very complex and other similar values that we have conquered through life experience. Criteria also come from upbringing methods, from teachers, from schools, from friends, from spouses, from people we appreciate, anyone in our environment who was loved or appreciated by us automatically became another criterion. All these criteria accumulate and either overlap or neutralize each other. And so, as we grow older, we gradually come to know about what we will use as a guideline, as a compass, as a criterion in our work. That is why, when we submit our work for judgment to third parties, they should not just be people who deal with the subject or who know photography but people with whom we feel that we have a common base on which their criteria can stand. Thus, the choice of the person who advises us, the teacher, the friend, our close one, is a way to make it a personal criterion. Now, if our judgment is subject to continuous challenges, that is, if we do not have the courage to choose because we might doubt the correctness of the judgment, then it will be very difficult to move forward in our lives because our entire life is filled with doubts. Think if we cannot judge between two or five photographs in the tranquility of our office how we can do this when we are faced with life running ahead of us and which we need to photograph. Thus, many times we make a decision; it does not need to be put into painstaking study and scientific evaluation. We chose it, and let's support it, and if we support it, the next photographs we take will come to support that first choice as well. Our criteria, therefore, to a degree have a reason for their speed and a degree of arbitrariness. But this arbitrariness gradually becomes part of our criteria, is established, and is justified by subsequent photographs. Do not agonize if what we judged will prove in the history of our lives as absolutely correct. If we do not judge, however, and accept everything, it is impossible for us to be able to take a fruitful next step.