View single post by Robert
 Posted: Mon May 25th, 2015 17:34
Robert



Joined: Mon Apr 2nd, 2012
Location: South Lakeland, UK
Posts: 4066
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Eric wrote:

I just took some kitchen photos for a customer. ( yes I have retired but it was a series of 6 kitchens that should have been finished and done before April) The customer ( who makes and fits the kitchens) came back with an email saying "STUNNING IMAGES!". They were over the moon with the quality.

I thought they were average ...in fact ....part of me was already saying ” I've retired...so if they are no good, what the heck, they just won't ask me again...good!”

The point is ...taking images to meet an average albeit acceptable standard doesn't do us any favours.


I think you are perhaps too hard on yourself Eric, YOU probably feel you could have done better, and that is what keeps your standards as high as they are. Some jobs I have done are a complete codge, but the client has been over the moon. I don't see the point in striving for absolute perfection when it isn't necessary. When the need arrises then wheel out the perfection, otherwise near enough IS good enough.

Indeed, as far as image resolution is concerned I feel you can have too much detail in many photographs. I feel the absolute detail over the entire image is a bit of a distraction from the subject and the eye of the viewer, yes it's nice to see the texture of the plumage of a distant bird but we don't need to see each filament of the feathers.

I have seen some of the finest botanic drawings ever made, the detail is stunning, the interpretation so good but they were made with quite blunt pencils with a gross resolution and paint brushes comparatively broad, yet the artist made these blunt tools portray to 'perfection' their subject, with no ambiguity about what they had drawn and coloured.

What I am trying to say is the simple resolution is not as important as the execution of the work, the skill of the artist.

Your client who was stunned by your Kitchen photographs wasn't looking at the resolution, he was looking at your artistic product. That does not require infinite definition, in my opinion, just adequate for the job.



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Robert.