MANY OF MY PHOTOGRAPHER FRIENDS NOW SHARE STORIES WITH ME, not about the great shots they bagged or the selling points of this or that bit of kit, but of the physical costs of staying in the game. Now, of course, I should mention that most of these friends are also, like myself, getting pretty long in the tooth, and that the rigors of making images have become more pronounced with every new day. Cameras, no matter how compact or streamlined, still have to be lugged from one place to another, and since the shooting experience is crammed with variables, from topography to weather to one’s own mortal carapace, said lugging can exact a toll as time progresses. Many of my birding friends, for example, frequently suffer a muscular crunch known as “birder’s neck”, induced by too many skyward searches for titmice and flycatchers. Others get it in the shoulders because the only lens for a certain job is also the most likely to louse up one’s upper arm. And so forth.
Cambria, California, September 6, 2025, 180mm, f/6.3, ISO 100, 1/640 sec.
It’s impossible to age without eventually fixating on how much the process seems to be speeding up, or, in photographic terms, how many shots we’re likely to be around to take. We are, suddenly, one backache, one misplaced step, or one out-of-warranty ailment from obsolescence, inducing the feeling that even our most considered frames are random shots from a bullet train. It’s as if dusk is approaching and we’re trying to squeeze in just one more somersault on the summer lawn before our dad calls us home. It thus becomes tricky to remain calm, to remind ourselves that, even were we to top the century mark, we could never see or shoot it all. We have to learn to be okay with limits. Because, simply, we have no choice.
And so we learn how to choose….our place, our time, our approach, our moments of abandon, our rhythm of patience. We become photo editors of the soul, posing the everlasting questions, what can be done? With these conditions? With this stretch of time? With how I feel right now? This is not despair, merely a recognition of the tools and time we have. It’s really the same calculation that all photographers have always had to make, except that time (or its imminent disappearance) has now rendered the choice more urgent. I keep hearing Adam West’s Batman rousing his partner to the chase with “QUICKLY, ROBIN! THERE’S NOT A MOMENT TO LOSE!” in that stentorian call to arms that was his melodramatic specialty. And so it is with the making of pictures. There is still time to play, along with more carefully adjusted and efficient ways to do it. The bullet train races on, but not everything out the window need be a blur.
OUR VERY HUMAN DESIRE TO MAKE OUR PHOTOGRAPHY TECHNICALLY FLAWLESS can be observed in the results you can glean from a simple Google search of the words “perfect” and “photos”. Hundreds of tutorials and how-tos pop up on how to get “the perfect portrait”, “the perfect family picture”, “the perfect sunset”, and of course, “the perfect wedding shot”. The message is all too clear; when it comes to making pictures, we desperately want to get it right. But how to get it right…that’s a completely different discussion.
One of my favorite selfies, even though I can’t justify it by any technical standard.
Because if, by “perfect”, we means a seamless blend of accurate exposure, the ideal aperture, and the dream composition, then I think we are barking up a whole forest of wrong trees. Mere technical prowess in photography can certainly be taught, but does obeying all these rules result in a “perfect” picture?
If you stipulate that you can produce a shot that is both precise in technique and soulless and empty, then we should probably find a more reasonable understanding of perfection. Perfect is, to me, a word that should describe the emotional impact of the result, not the capital “S” science that went into its execution. That is, some images are so powerful that we forget to notice their technical shortcomings. And that brings us to the second part of this exercise.
Can a flawed image move us, rouse us to anger, turn us on, help us see and feel? Absolutely, and they do all the time. We may talk perfection, but we are deeply impressed with honesty. Of course, in two hundred years, we still haven’t shaken the mistaken notion that a photograph is “reality”. It is not, and never was, even though it has an optical resemblance to it. It became apparent pretty early in the game that photographs could not only record, but persuade, and, yes, lie. So whatever you shoot, no matter how great you are at setting your settings, is an abstraction. That means it’s already less than perfect, even before you add your own flaws and faults. So the game is already lost. Or, depending on our viewpoint, a lot more interesting.
Go for impact over perfect every time. You can control how much emotional wallop is packed into your pictures just as surely as you can master the technical stuff, and pictures that truly connect on a deep level will kick the keester of a flawless picture every single time. The perfect picture is the one that brings back what you sent it to do. The camera can’t breathe life into a static image. Only a photographer can do that.
thenormaleye 
PERFECT VS RIGHT
By MICHAEL PERKINS
OUR VERY HUMAN DESIRE TO MAKE OUR PHOTOGRAPHY TECHNICALLY FLAWLESS can be observed in the results you can glean from a simple Google search of the words “perfect” and “photos”. Hundreds of tutorials and how-tos pop up on how to get “the perfect portrait”, “the perfect family picture”, “the perfect sunset”, and of course, “the perfect wedding shot”. The message is all too clear; when it comes to making pictures, we desperately want to get it right. But how to get it right…that’s a completely different discussion.
One of my favorite selfies, even though I can’t justify it by any technical standard.
Because if, by “perfect”, we means a seamless blend of accurate exposure, the ideal aperture, and the dream composition, then I think we are barking up a whole forest of wrong trees. Mere technical prowess in photography can certainly be taught, but does obeying all these rules result in a “perfect” picture?
If you stipulate that you can produce a shot that is both precise in technique and soulless and empty, then we should probably find a more reasonable understanding of perfection. Perfect is, to me, a word that should describe the emotional impact of the result, not the capital “S” science that went into its execution. That is, some images are so powerful that we forget to notice their technical shortcomings. And that brings us to the second part of this exercise.
Can a flawed image move us, rouse us to anger, turn us on, help us see and feel? Absolutely, and they do all the time. We may talk perfection, but we are deeply impressed with honesty. Of course, in two hundred years, we still haven’t shaken the mistaken notion that a photograph is “reality”. It is not, and never was, even though it has an optical resemblance to it. It became apparent pretty early in the game that photographs could not only record, but persuade, and, yes, lie. So whatever you shoot, no matter how great you are at setting your settings, is an abstraction. That means it’s already less than perfect, even before you add your own flaws and faults. So the game is already lost. Or, depending on our viewpoint, a lot more interesting.
Go for impact over perfect every time. You can control how much emotional wallop is packed into your pictures just as surely as you can master the technical stuff, and pictures that truly connect on a deep level will kick the keester of a flawless picture every single time. The perfect picture is the one that brings back what you sent it to do. The camera can’t breathe life into a static image. Only a photographer can do that.
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May 28, 2017 | Categories: Aperture, Focus, P.O.V., Technique | Tags: Commentary, Composition, exposure, process | Leave a comment