“This is perfection!”. Honestly, I don’t think I have ever taken a “perfect” photograph. So, yup I have never said that. I am not even sure it is possible to take the perfect shot. Even when all the most desirable factors combine in the moment so many other things can still go awry.
The other side of the coin is what we see as the viewer. The experience of taking the image and the experience of viewing it later are also two very different things both subjective in themselves.
We might know we didn’t get the best shot becasue the light just changed before we could shoot and so the shot we ended up with is always the “inferior” version of perfection in our own mind. We may have misjudged the composition and later wished we had included a bit more of the thing on the left.
Happily the viewer never sees these regrets and doesn’t see that personal history as we do. So already that works in our favour especially when you are beating yourself up over missing out on that key element you didn’t capture in frame.
Flowers:
One of my passions in photography are flowers, colour and shape are always fun to play with. But when I take an objective close-up look at many of the images I create, there are always details I didn’t spot. For a long time I used to kick myself over “why didn’t I see that bit of pollen in the wrong place”, or “the withered edge of that petal” that really stands out. I guess the excitment of finding that “perfect” image gets a bit overwhelming at times. (Mental note to self on that one maybe, curb the excitment a little and think more) Will add that to the rules.
There is another side to that coin for me. I have spent hours maybe even weeks or months in total looking for the perfect flower. One in it’s prime. They are really hard to find unless you buy them from a florist, not something I have ever done. So when out and about there is usually a detractor to perfection. These days I embrace that. I use it as balance. The slight touch of decay or age, the errant petal the missing leaf. I welcome them as they signal the truth of life, the fact that we all have flaws and that the sum of our parts is a verison of our perfection and that also includes the withering edges.
