Photographers and videographers tend to pursue perfection (no matter how elusive it may be) in so many ways, ranging from technique to the gear they buy. But there is a lot more to life than perfection, and a lot of the most worthwhile creative pursuits can be found by embracing imperfection.
Coming to you from aows, this excellent video essay discusses the importance of embracing imperfection in your work. This is something I have recently started to think about quite a bit. I look back on my first attempts at serious photography, and while they are flawed in plenty of ways, they also show a lot more creativity than a lot of my newer work in that I was unafraid to be adventurous with my edits and push things to extremes. Over time, as I gained more skill and technique, some of that adventurousness fell to the wayside, replaced by a pursuit of technical perfection. Of course, one needs good technique, and embracing imperfection is not about excusing a lack of skill. Rather, it is about having a willingness to experiment and to push boundaries for the sake of creativity and personal style. Check out the video above for some thought-provoking points on the matter.
Love this and the images he creates. What I aspire to do,but not there yet.
When I was starting out as a wildlife photographer, I also was much more "adventurous" in how I shot and how I processed ..... as you can expect, my images had technical imperfections.
I started submitting my images to publishers and editors, and they hardly ever got chosen for use. The images that were getting published were those taken by much more experienced photographers, and those images were technically very close to perfect.
I soon learned the opposite of what this article is saying - that if I wanted to become successful in selling my photography to these markets, I had to forget about the adventurous, "unique" stuff, and focus much more on technical perfection. Once I did that, my images started to sell, and now I earn a good part of my living from the technically sound images that I take.
If selling images for magazines is your goal, good work. Do what you need to do to get that sale
But, what makes your images different to the guy standing next to you, with the same camera, the same lens?
Four things will make our images different:
1: The position from which we take the image. That guy net to me may be a few feet to one side or standing up while I am lying prone, or vice versa, etc.
2: The timing at which we take the images. I may be set up and waiting for a given pose or behavior, while he may be waiting for a different pose or behavior.
3: The settings we use can cause our images to differ in regard to depth of field, exposure, degree of noise grain, blur from subject motion, or blur from camera motion.
4: The way we frame the scene. I may shoot wide and have a lot of surrounding habitat giving context to the subject, while the guy next to me may be framing the subject tightly to showcase a particular physical feature of the subject, or vice versa.
Regardless of what the differences are and what causes the images to be different, if one of us produces images that have technical flaws, then that person will have absolutely no chance whatsoever of selling that image for publication, regardless of how unique or creative it is.
Being creative or original isn't enough - you have to have work that is creative, unique, and also technically perfect. Just because an image is fun or creative or original doesn't excuse it from needing to be technically proficient. You have to do EVERYTHING at a very high level to have any chance at all.