Quote o' the Day: A Story and a Heart

Tim Bradshaw shared this the other day: "At the darkroom I use (but probably won't use for a while given COVID-19), the person who made it has a bit of paper stuck to the wall which says (if I remember):

'It doesn't have to be perfect, so long as it has a story and a heart.'

"Which I think is just a wonderful thing to bear in mind in this era of too often perfect but soulless photographs."

-

(Posted by) Mike

Tim adds: "This should be credited to Sebastian Edge without whom the North London Darkroom would not exist. He's kept it running for a long time against extraordinary odds: I just hope that it can survive COVID-19. If you're in London and want to make B&W prints in a darkroom, please consider NLD: it's a lovely place and Seb has worked stupidly hard to keep it alive. He's also an interesting photographer."

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[Stelios]

Most excellent.

Thank you.

[Roger Bradbury]

The words on that piece of paper in the darkroom are now on a piece of paper
on my notice board, together with these words:

"If Your Photos Aren't Good Enough, You're Not Close Enough (Robert Capa)"

(and)

"Our photo director at Wired.com, Jim Merithew, loves to give this advice to photographers: "If you're not getting invited to dinner, you're not doing your job.”"

Of course Robert Capa meant how you are involved and how much you care about the subject, not just to fill the frame.

The Wired.com quote comes from this piece on photographer Lisa Krantz:

https://www.wired.com/2013/03/lisa-krantz/

This is the link to her website. I've never heard of her before but I suspect she gets invited to dinner often:

http://lisakrantz.com

A Life Apart: the Toll of Obesity, was the first essay I looked through.

[Daniel]

“A technically perfect photograph can be the world's most boring picture.”― Andreas Feininger

Technical excellence in an image with Soul is a worthy goal. No excuse for poor craftsmanship while at the same time the search for perfection expressed with boring images is a crime against photography.

[Thomas Walsh]

Is it man's nature to attempt to quantify perception? One of the graces of the arts , at least for me, is their ability to engender emotions, which, of course, are subjective. Clearly, as it has often been stated, "de gustibus non est disputandum".

[Jim Arthur]

"Poets, prophets, and reformers are all picture-makers — and this ability is the secret of their power and of their achievements. They see what ought to be by the reflection of what is, and endeavor to remove the contradiction." ~ Frederick Douglass

[Zack Schindler]

I used to try to make every photo perfect and if necessary remove things I did not like in post-processing. However I am well past that now. A while back I learned of wabi-sabi and apply it to my photography now. "In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" - from Wikipedi. So what if my photo is not "perfect". For me some of the beauty is the imperfectness.

[Jeff1000]

Yes, technical quality does not make a poor image great, and a lack of technical quality does not make a great image poor.

[Dillan]

That is a great quote.

[F.W. Scharpf]

@ Roger Bradbury: The Lisa Krantz website is absolutely amazing. Thanks for pointing me to it.
Fritz

[hugh crawford]

For a while everyplace I worked as a software architect I would write "the perfect is the enemy of the good" in permanent marker at the top of the whiteboard. I think it applies in many fields.