Why the 'Perfect' shot is overrated

Do you ever feel stuck, endlessly tweaking photos, searching for that 'perfect' look that seems just out of reach? You're not alone. We've all been conditioned to believe in a singular ideal of photographic perfection. But what if I told you that once you understand the truth about the 'perfect shot,' you'll not only take better photos but also find more joy in your photography? Let's discover why.

There are two photography quotes that I particularly like:

Ansel Adams: “There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.”

David Alan Harvey: “Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like.”

In this podcast, I’ll talk through why I like these quotes and why being too focused on achieving the perfect shot can backfire and stop you from producing anything.

I’ll also talk you through a few exercises. The first is from my online course “Discovering DSLR and Mirrorless Photography”, where I ask you to look at an image that you regard as ‘perfect’ (or as near as, as makes no difference). And look at specific elements, such as lighting and composition. How has the photographer approached these elements, and what makes them work so well?

I also suggest that you take the ‘imperfection challenge’ (and let me know in the comments if you would like me to create a formal challenge for you):

1. Shoot out of focus
2. Breach the composition rules 
3. Deliberately use the wrong camera settings (i.e. exposure, iso, etc.)
4. Only allow yourself one-take shots (so no ‘chimping’)
5. Use the worst angles you can find.

Ironically, you’re likely to open up a door into a whole new level of creativity… and how you define your perfect shot is likely to change, too. 

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Transcript

>> Graham: 0:08

Foreign. Do you ever find yourself stuck and perhaps endlessly tweaking a photograph to get it right, to get it perfect? Well, if that is you, it's something I can relate to. And what I'm going to do in this podcast is really talk about the perfect photograph and, and also talk about why it doesn't exist. So my name is Graeme Elliot. If you find this interesting, useful, would like to hear, more. Please, like subscribe all the other good things. So what is a perfect photograph? Well, there is a myth, I suppose, about perfection. And I think it's one of the biggest traps we can fall into really doing anything in life. If we want to make it perfect, the chances are highly stacked that we won't. And in fact, what tends to happen is trying to reach perfection actually stops us achieving anything at all. Because if you wait until something's perfect, the chances are you're never going to get there. And I think this is particularly true with photography and particularly true in certain ways. So I'm going to talk a little bit about this and if you do relate to this, if this does resonate with you, just talk a little bit about what you can do to break through it and actually how you can use this, let's say chase for perfection to improve your photography. So I'm going to start with, a couple of quotes, and they come. The first one is from Ansel Adams, who hopefully you've heard of, but if you haven't, he was well known, I think in the 30s of the 20th, century, because we're almost just catching up with them. And, he was well known as a landscape photographer, mostly photographing in black and white. And one of his quotes that I really like, and he's done quite a few, is that there is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. So what is he talking about? This is touching on the difference between technical perfection and producing the perfect photograph. So in other words, you can get everything right, technically. correct exposure, correct depth of field, everything's nice and sharp, but there's something missing. And the bit that's missing is the concept, it's the idea, it's the story. And if you've listened to me before, you know, I'll. I talk a lot about the Visual Storyteller and the whole or one of the key ideas behind the Visual storyteller is to encourage people to start taking photographs that mean something, have some sort of an impact. You're conveying something more than simply the image on, the Screen, on the paper, whatever you're, however you're displaying your photographs. And then another one that I like. And, I was running a magazine for a while, three years ago now. But anyway, it's. I used to like putting the quote in, I, think on the COVID actually. And one that I did use, and it's one that I really like. It's from David Allen Harvey, and the quote is, don't shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like. And this, to me, is a really important aspect of what the perfect photograph is. And I will definitely come back to that and talk that through in a bit, in a few minutes. So what are the elements? Let's look, first of all at the technical side, because for a lot of people, it is. A lot of it is about getting it technically right. And I'm gonna also suggest that it isn't. Because if. If this podcast isn't about me contradicting myself, I don't know what else. I don't know what it's about, but let's look at the technical stuff. So lighting. And what I want you to do is start to think about what the perfect photograph is for you. And if you have been on my online. Excuse me, my online, DSLR mirrorless photography course, one of the very first exercises that I get people to do is to actually look at a photograph that they love that inspires them. I don't use the word perfect, but I'll use it in this podcast. So if there's a particular image that you have in your mind or that you found somewhere, that, to you is the perfect photograph, start breaking it down. So what is it about the lighting? what choices has the photographer made? Is it, is it a studio setup? And if it's studio, how they arrange the lighting? Because obviously in studio, you set the lighting. You can do all sorts of stuff in the studio, and m. It's completely under your control. If it's not in a studio, then does time of day have an impact? Does the weather have an impact? is it a natural light? Is it harsh? What's going on there? But look at the lighting and start to think about what is it about the lighting that works just as one component of that particular, image? Because obviously the lighting has a huge impact on the final result, on the final image, and it may well be for the kind of image you want to shoot. The kind of image you regard as perfect. Lighting is a key aspect of it photography. It probably will be to some extent, but I'D imagine probably up there as one of the main things you're, looking at now. The next one is composition. So I hope you know about rule of Thirds. if you don't, you're welcome to download, the guide, the 10 tips guide on the website. And it's certainly one of the composition rules, that I talk about a lot again, in the course. There's that one and there are others. But basically with composition, there are certain rules. You can use that automatic, or it's very hard to shoot using them and make a photograph look uninteresting. But I'll leave that challenge out there. But what about what happens when you break the rules? What happens when you don't use all the thirds or you don't position the, the subject somewhere in the middle of the frame? What happens when you deliberately do something unusual? What does that do to the image? And more importantly, how does that affect how you view the image? Does it make you more curious? Do you tend to look at it for longer to either try and work out what's going on, or maybe you begin to see things in that image that you wouldn't see if the photographer had used rule of thirds or one of the other standard composition techniques. So have a think about how you're composing your shots and the kind of composition rules that you're using as a comparison. And then again, go back to the kind of image that really inspires you and look at the com. the composition on that image. And that, again, will give you some pointers to really breaking down and defining what makes a perfect image. And that's sort of partly what I'm driving at here. And because I'm contradicting myself, I'm also not. the final thing that I'm going to talk about here in terms of the elements of the shot is the subject and the story. So one of the key rules that I definitely give to people when they start out is to have a clear subject. Because one of the problems I see coming up most often, when I'm teaching photography is that there's no clear subject. So I'm looking at an image, and it can be beautifully exposed. Colors are great, all that kind of thing. Lighting is good. but I don't know what I'm looking at. You know, what is this? why am I looking at this? Why have you. Why are you showing me this image? What am I supposed to be getting from it? And this is really important because usually with any image that inspires us, it inspires Us because we feel connected to it somehow. And it will usually be about the subject and what's going on with that subject, hence the story. And this is where I use the phrase the visual storyteller when I talk about putting photographs together and composing. So that is sort of the technical side. I'm not going to shutter speed normal that I'll take that as given that you've, you've got a good, or that the image has chosen a good shutter speed or that's what we would normally do, when we're creating this amazing image but moving on to the subjectivity part of it. Now when I teach photography I talk about four stages. So the first one is imagining and the image. so that's the concept. Going back to the Ansel Adams quote, we're saying there's nothing worse than sharp image of a fuzzy concept. The concept is what you have in your mind perhaps before you even pick the camera up. And usually if you're trying to shoot a perfect photograph, you'll know what that is. You'll have an idea in your head about what that perfect photograph looks like. So that's the very first part of the photography process. Second is the catch part of it. And that', m, that is about definitely the technical side. Exposure, shutter speed, ISO, all of that stuff, depth of field. It's also about composition because that's where you're broadly setting composition. now you don't have to get it exactly right because that's what the third stage is for. And that's the post processing part where you might change the composition by re cropping the image somehow. You want to maybe tweak the colors, maybe get rid of them all together. You might do some work with the exposure. It might not quite have come out as you'd, as you'd expected. And obviously this is the difference between when we look at a, a subject, it might be an amazing sunset and when we shoot it with a camera, what we see is often very different. And that's simply because how our visual system, which is our eyes and our brain is interpreting the information that's coming through to it is not the same as the system that interprets that same data as it comes through, the lanes and lands on the sensor or your film or whatever else you're using. So this is the subjectivity part. It's about what is good, what is not. So moving beyond the technical. And this is the fourth part of the process. And this is where somebody looks and it might be You. But whoever it is is looking at that image and they're looking at it through the lens of their life experience. This is where we, two people or more can look at the same image and either, see something different or the story is different or the meaning is different that they give to that image because their experience shapes how they. The final interpretation that they make of that image. So from a subjectivity perspective, you've got how the audience to anybody viewing that image responds, to it. And as I say, that will be based on their life experience, their cultural background, their taste. They may love it, they may hate it. Pardon me. And this is why, people may hate your photographs. And I did a podcast on that a while back now. But there's again, it's really to talk about that and not, to make it personal about you. Remember, everybody looks at things through their own life experience. we've got the intent. Yourself as an artist, as a photographer, your. How you and what you initially had in mind is actually really important and the message that you're trying to send. These are two key drivers that go beyond the technical. So the technical is obviously just technically capturing the image, getting the image onto the sensor, onto the film. But how that image is put together, that's down to you as a creative person. Now, when it comes to perfection, if you put perfection and creativity together and you're trying to be creative but creating the perfect photograph, often that can m. Backfire because what will happen is you never quite get to the perfective perfection part. You decide you're not creative at all and you stop altogether. And that may sound silly if you've never come across that or if this does resonate with you, then, I can certainly understand that because that's certainly occurred to me with my drawing. I also draw. And at the age of 15, when I was drawing, drawing lots of birds actually, and I kept getting told by the people around me what was wrong with my drawings. Nobody was really encouraging me. And so basically at the age of 15, I gave up. And it wasn't until I hit 50, which is a bit of a gap, that I really picked it up again and realized that I could draw pretty well actually. so this is it. Don't let other people's opinions put, you off. So what's perfect for them is not necessarily going to be perfect for you. And also don't get too hung up on perfection, particularly if you're trying to meet other people's standards. If we're Looking at perfection from a more generic, more industrial viewpoint, let's say. So looking at photography as an industry, I, to be honest, I personally never do. because to me photography is about what works for me. It's about. If I'm doing photography for somebody else, obviously I need to be meeting their requirements. But beyond that, honestly, I don't care because things are so subjective that you can't. It comes back to trying to please everyone and you'll never do that. So if there is an industrial or an overall photography, example of perfection, my own opinion is to not worry about it too much and carry on doing your own thing and doing things that you enjoy because that also keeps you very focused and engaged. And this is where you will develop your creativity and you will develop your portfolio. And also what you're likely to find is that your style changes over, time. So what I want to talk about as well is just going beyond. Going beyond this idea m of perfection. And the. The first thing here. Sorry, I just slipped off my desk. The first thing here is really the importance of emotion. And this is something I want to come back to because one of the pictures that I remember and I didn't actually shoot this, I was doing a photo walk with somebody in Sydney. And one of the people on the walk shot this picture and they showed it to me and I just thought it was amazing. So, if you picture the scene, we're actually on the Cahill Expressway, which, if you don't know that is basically a dual carriageway that runs along one end of Circular Quay. And Circular Quay is where you've got the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And we were basically walking along there taking photographs of the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House because it's high, so you've got a nice viewpoint there. And a group of runners came running along. So we'll sort of step to one side to let them go by. And the person on the walk took a photograph of these runners as they were running away from us. But in this photograph, one of the runners was looking back and I just. To me, you may not relate to this at all, it's fine. But to me it was a really good photograph. Now technically everything was a bit blurry. the person even looking back wasn't that sharp. But the point was there was There was definitely a certain atmosphere because of the lower lighting. The fact that the shutter speed wasn't quite fast enough to freeze the action actually put movement into the Image. So there was a, definitely and to me that creates emotion, that creates an emotional connection. So it was a little bit more abstract in some ways because it wasn't just a very sharp picture of runners. It was, it was blurry. There was moving in there and then there was this one person looking back. Now again, what that meant to me it was more about standing out from the crowd or being different or not following the crowd or even it could be interpreted as someone being lonely sort of in a group, but the only one looking back. So you know, what are they looking back for? And you may well have picked something else up from looking at that image if you'd seen it. But the point is we make our own story and this is important to the visual storyteller what we can do as photographers. It's good to have our own ideas and present the story that we see. But the whole aspect I guess where it becomes art, ah, is where other people put their meaning onto the image that we produce. So you may produce something with a very clear and direct story. Certainly, if I'm photographing wildlife, if it's a conservation type photograph, normally I try not to leave much room for misinterpretation there because I want to get a specific message across. But in more general terms, in a more general artistic kind of environment where there's not a single story, you leave that room for the person looking at the image to create their own story. And this is where you'll get. Some people absolutely love it and other people can't just don't get it. So, and this is what goes on and this is perfectly fine. So I'm going to go through some ideas for you that, where we can explore this a bit further. So really these are ah, what have we got? Five suggestions. And I've called this the Imperfection Challenge. And I'm just going to run through the five and I'm going to suggest that you do this and if you want to if you want to put some comments in, if you're interested in me setting up something like maybe a five day challenge or a seven day challenge, something like that, a seven day imperfection challenge. I'm certainly happy to do that but I'm more interested in doing things that you find useful. So I won't have that available right now as this podcast goes out. So the very first one is to deliberately shoot out of focus. Now some people are doing it anyway, but not intentionally. So the idea is to do that intentionally start shooting things out of focus. How out of focus, you can. You can experiment with. But this is the whole point of this. It's about deliberately doing the things that, in another situation, would be just crazy. if I'm trying to photograph a humpback while breaching, for example, I'm trying to get it nice and sharp and in focus. I'm not deliberately shooting the animal out of focus. However, having said that, that could create a very interesting image in a very different way to freezing this huge animal in midair, you know, in a fraction of a second. So the first challenge is to try shooting out of focus. The second one is to deliberately break all the rules of composition. So I've spoken a little bit about this already. So forget rule of, thirds. Forget all the other things. Forget the, Nick golden spiral and all these other great things. Deliberately cut people's heads off. You know, all the things we joke about. M. The old photography jokes about, you know, I cut people's heads off and all this stuff. Just do it. don't put people in the middle of the frame. Put them off to one edge. try them high, try them low, in one edge of the frame, but see what the difference is. Do you feel inspired by these images when you look at them? And another tip, actually, is to bow means have a look at them straight away. But if you don't like them, don't delete them. Just leave them there and then come back to them a few, maybe two, three months later, and then look at them new. And the reason for doing that, and I do this a lot with my wildlife stuff, actually, is that often when I've shot something, I might not have quite got what I had in mind. So this is trying to hit perfection, by the way. And, so the image I've got, I'm initially disappointed with it. And what I would have been tempted to do in the past would just delete it and move on. What I've learned, though, is that the important thing to do is just leave those images there and then come back to them two or three months later. And the reason that you do that is you've forgotten, or I've forgotten what I had in mind originally. So I'm now looking at that image in its own right. And in doing that, suddenly I start to see things in there that I hadn't noticed before because I wasn't looking for them. I was looking for the original concept I had in my, head, and it wasn't there. And that was when I stopped looking, I stopped seeing what was really in there. So deliberately break the rules of composition. The third one is to deliberately use wrong settings. So here I'm talking about deliberately under or overexposing an image drive. The is up to the maximum to really force the grain. And maybe if you're in post process and really draw the grain out, maybe go for really high contrast. I shot some black and white film. This was years ago, but when it was processed it was actually very contrasty and I absolutely loved it. It was just such a really cool effect, very abstract effect. So these days with post processing we can just do it straight away, take the shot, pop it in the computer or even on your phone or on your camera, depending on what software you've got. But somewhere very handy and you can just do some post processing. So if you've shot an image, whip the color out of it, make it a monochrome and then just play with the contrast, make it really high contrast, so overexposed, underexpose, all that kind of stuff. Try grain. the fourth one is to just take a shot once and don't look at it. So no chimping. And that is the term for when you take a photograph and you immediately look at it in the back of the camera because normally from a wildlife perspective that's when all the action happens and you've missed it completely. Completely. so don't look at an image when you shot it. Wait until you've got home or wherever you're going so that you can't reshoot it. And just what I would suggest, because this is something, a discipline that I picked up when I was training years ago doing a photography course with a professional photographer. And that was using film. And the important thing about film was she was doing. So she's a commercial photographer photographing doing portraits and high end weddings. So I've spoken about this before. But a wedding, this was in 2004, so a wedding back then would have been about £20,000 I think was the sort of number massively expensive even today. So she would need to be shooting some really good stuff. And also because it was a business, she wasn't going to spend hours scanning, post processing all of that kind of stuff, which at that time we were able to do that. So that was in that sort of transition really from film to digital cameras. Where the digital cameras at the time are not that brilliant. Although there is a trend for that coming back right now there's a fashion for shooting low resolution digital stuff, but that's another subject. but she would do the way she described it. She said she would do all of her cropping through the viewfinder. So essentially once she'd hit that shutter button and the picture was taken, that was it. She wasn't doing anything any more work with that image because she'd got settings correct, she got them the way she wanted them. She understood things like cross processing, which if you don't know, is where you would, process a color negative film, but using the, slide film processing, the different systems, but you deliberately process the film using the wrong system. And that brought out some interesting stuff. So if you are shooting film, you might have to explain to somebody what cross processing is. but you get some interesting, get some interesting effects doing that. So again, this is all about experimentation. Then the fifth one, the last one, is to just shoot from bad angles. Shoot really high or really low, anything else you can think of. Just go for angles that you wouldn't normally choose because what they again will do, you'll start to see things differently. I used to do it on, photo walks that I used to be involved with in Sydney, because I'd be involved every week or every two weeks. And we were in the same general area. I mean, we'd varied a bit. But you know, how many times have I seen this bench? So I would deliberately just, if I was lacking inspiration, I would just put the camera on the ground and shoot from on the ground. And so I've got this very low angle. And pretty much every time that would give me some ideas about how I could come up with something different, something new. So I definitely recommend that. Okay, so, so the idea of this was really to talk about the perfect photo and the strive for perfection. And I guess the thought I really want to leave you with because I have bounced around a little bit on this one, is first of all perfection. You can argue, argue technical perfection. But this is this whole point about the. We've had both of the quotes I gave you. You can shoot something that's technically, technically correct, and I can't even say that, but it could be the most uninteresting photograph ever and you can't connect with it at all. Or you can shoot something that technically is all over the place, but you've got this amazing connection. And that example I gave you was just one of the images I've seen where that was definitely the case. So perfection. If you're Choosing the perfect photograph. Perfection is what that means to you. And so I've given you some ideas of how you can start to really pin that down, really get specific about what aspects of an image make it perfect or at least get you close. And then the final thing I want to leave you with is to not get hung up on perfection, because perfection is a journey. I just thought of that. but what happens in photography is as we, as we try new things, as we get new ideas, as we're expired, inspired by somebody else, or we accidentally shoot something, we get a setting wrong, our whole style evolves and it's not unusual at all for, particularly if you're shooting a lot and being experimental and trying these kind of things. I've suggested that when you suddenly stop and look back what you were shooting 10 years ago, you realize it's very, very different to what you're shooting now. And the chances are it looks very limited. You look at these situations and you would, if it was now, you would shoot them very differently. So I hope you found that interesting. And, if you have, please, like, subscribe all those other things, please jump on the website, have a look. There are things there to help you. Please comment, let me know what you'd like to hear about. If you're interested in doing the, the Imperfection Challenge, I will put one together for you. And, just make that available as a free download on the website. Okay, that's it from me. I hope you have a great day or evening, wherever you're at, and, I'll speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now. Well, I hope you enjoyed that. Now, I just want to say thank you for tuning in and joining me in the, the Wildlife and Adventure Photography podcast. If you have enjoyed today's episode, please give me a, Like a subscribe, maybe tell your friends, and by all means leave a comment. And if there is a subject you would like me to cover in the future, please let me know and I'll, be very happy to do my best. So thanks again for, joining me and I look forward to seeing you again Next podcast. Bye for now.