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See complete January 2012 News Letter here 

Photography has always attracted an interesting and eclectic mix of artistic and technical types, and since the advent of digital, we seem to be getting even more of the latter. Well over half the young photographers we work with (or “teach”, the word they like to use) come from scientific backgrounds like programming, engineering, and medicine. They tend to arrive at the concept of photography with a confidence and logic that the creation of an image must be subject to the same kind of rational analysis and processes that apply in their perspective fields.

Too often, this results in what we might call “theoretical” photography. These fellows (that’s their gender, almost always) have all the gear: lenses in every possible focal length, cameras with sensors so noiseless it’s almost eerie, software that can all but turn pixels inside out. They’ve done the research and spent the money. They’ve read the books and watched the videos. Theoretically, they’re ready to create photos of unsurpassed quality… but somehow, that isn’t quite happening. And judging from what we see on the cyber heaven, they’re not alone.

Perfection is subjective.

For example, a professional can look at an amateur and see mediocre work, while the amateur can look at a professional and see organized mediocre work. Too often, we will tweak a few pixels trying to please everyone, but everyone views perfection differently.

We get so involved in trying to please everyone that we forget that there will always be 33% of people who like you, 33% of people who will not, and 33% could not care less. Perfection is being able to ignore the ones who don’t like your work and convince the ones who don’t care to join the ones who do like it.

Perfection is meeting your goals.

In the past, I never did pre-production to define project goals; most of my projects would find themselves traveling the infinite loop highway to perfection.

After you get a little dizzy, the first thing you start to do is to define your goals upfront. Without predefined goals, it gets too easy to get off focus, worrying about new goals and thinking they will help make things perfect, but only offset them causing the project to go past deadline or lose its focus entirely.

Here we are describing some experiences we all have had with personal projects; getting caught up on details more than we would like to admit. On a daily basis, we have to remind ourselves that there is no such thing as a perfect photograph, and that we need to revisit our defined goals. When it comes time for the publication to go to press, it doesn’t matter if it won the Pulitzer Prize; it only matters if we delivered on time and on goal.

Perfection sets standards.

Perfection is the state in which something is flawless; we improve our standards based on this concept. The standards we follow today have been controlled by the idea of having a perfect photographs or pictorials, and as we all know, there is no such thing. As we chase perfection, photography standards help to push photographers in the right direction; perfection gives us a purpose and opportunities to improve.

Perfection to us can mean many things, but at Shoot The Centerfold seminars and workshops, standards are one of the many things that bring perfection closer. We look upon our own standards as a guideline to becoming more perfect.

See complete January 2012 News Letter here