Evolution and adaption is the key to life as we know it right? We rarely see it as something that happens to us in our day to day living. However we adapt and change throughout our lifetime, learning and navigating through our inevitable mistakes.
Being human (or just alive) means mistakes are GOING to happen, and are actually part of the learning process. Unfortunately, it is ingrained in us from an early age, that mistakes (or getting things wrong), is simply bad.
Hmmmm, interesting....
The realisation that mistakes are not just bad, but are potentially beneficial to us, was a pivotal moment in my career. Prior to this, I was a stereotypical perfectionist when it came to my work. I would spend hours in the editing room removing the tiniest of blemishes and wasting hours of my life striving to create a level of perfection that was unachievable. At the time, I thought I was getting close, but now I find myself cringeing at those images.
Part of the photographic process is learning to cull your gallery. Selecting your top images is where the problem begins… Technically ‘perfect” photographs are pin point sharp, balanced in composition and well lit. My first job was to cull all the images where focus was missed (and I’m talking but millimetres!), images that were overexposed or unbalanced. I can now say with conviction…
When the focus is on achieving technical perfection,
we lose the creative.
Mellow Yellow is one of my all time favourite images. That said, it spent the first eight years of it’s life on a hard drive, in the back of a cupboard. Long forgotten and dismissed due to its technically imperfect qualities. Qualities that I now seek to achieve! Get that!!
Why? For me motion in a photo creates a feeling of life. Almost inviting you into the scene to experience it. Feel it.
It was only after a shoot with my own family, upon receiving the gallery and noticing that my favourite image was not in perfect focus that I began to question my process. Did it matter that it wasn’t pin point sharp? Not one tiny bit! I was more in love with this one image of my kids, than with any I had ever taken.
My portraiture work followed suit. I started to introduce movement into my images to capture the feeling of chaos that is ever present in family life with young kids. I began to fall in love with photography all over again.
So in conclusion, when we become too precious about the details we can stifle our creativity and miss the bigger picture. Part of creativity is making mistakes and experimenting. Who decides the rules? Maybe what they see as a ‘mistake', is actually the beginning of a new rule!
Do you have a 'mistake' in photography you need help with, or what do you do that breaks the rule? I would love to hear from you.
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