Art Of Perfection: How to Live Your Best Life
Art of perfection in this lush volcanic landscape near Myvatn Lake, Iceland.
If you’re wondering how to live your best life you’re not alone. As a travel photographer I’ve witness truly amazing scenes and met many wonderful and inspiring people. My own quest to create beautiful, life affirming photos has forced me to confront the often debilitating effects associated with the art of perfection in my own creative life.
How To Live Your Best Life By Being Remarkable
It’s the responsibility of the artist to be remarkable. And that is as true for you as it is for me.
To that end it's important to ward off those friends, colleagues and family members who try to temper our most remarkable endeavors and, ultimately, bring us down to their level.
Why are they jealous of our achievements? Does a part of them hanker for the wonderful life they imagine we must be living and the sense of freedom they feel is missing from their own lives?
I say yes.
But I also feel that these actions, which come largely from the subconscious, are motivated by fear. Our family and closest friends love us, but they also fear to lose us, and the fear of loss is a highly motivating and, ultimately, destructive emotion.
We can look at evolution from two distinctly different points of view: one based upon scientific rigor; the other upon a strict and literal reading of religious texts, such as the bible.
But as far as humanities future evolution is concerned, I ask the following:
Will perfection be achieved by humanity warping into some kind of human/machine hybrid, like the Borg?
Will the advancement of our species depend upon compassion and the giving and receiving of unconditional love?
It may be that, ultimately, a marriage of the these two, seemingly disperate paths will come into play.
While AI and spirituality might seem like strange bedfellows, the merger could lead us to a more psychologically developed state, the result of which would enable us to dedicate our energies to solving many of the problems experienced across our planet?
Is Perfection A Good Thing To Aim For?
I believe that a degree of perfection is desirable in the way we approach all serious activities in life. Whether it be business, relationships, health and fitness, or hobbies, aiming to be the best we can be is a worthy and ever moving goal.
Perfectionism can be aligned with motivation in so much that a desire for perfection can encourage you to work harder and more conscientiously towards achieving goals based, primarily, on quality of outcome.
Perfection, therefore, isn’t necessarily a win at all costs mentality. In fact winning may not even be the end goal for someone striving towards perfection. The idea is that you compete, primarily, against yourself so as to move yourself closer to the goal or target you’ve set for yourself.
Needless to say, the desire for perfectionism can also be a highly negative characteristic for photographers, particularly if it causes you to miss deadlines or, due to fear of failure, becomes a demotivating force that prevents you from either starting or completing your projects.
The Perfection and Procrastination Paradox
The quest for perfection can, quite easily, turn into procrastination.
Procrastination is often the manifestation of a debilitating fear of failure. For a commercial photographer this could lead to bankruptcy. For the artist photographer, procrastination can lead to a significant reduction in output and, in some cases, fear and anxiety can become part of the creative process.
Ultimately, the final result is what matters. But no one would wish to live the life of a tortured artist. It may work for you, but I’m happy to immerse myself in a project and work towards completing it, one task at a time.
Of course my plans are frequently disrupted by outside forces. That’s natural, most likely inevitable and just a part of the process we all have to work through as creative beings.
There’s very little in life, of any real significance, that we bring into existence that doesn’t involve a degree of uncertainty, stress and toil. It’s part of the human condition and, as such, part of the journey through life we all must take. To deny this fact is to deny what it is to be human.
As in all things, it’s necessary to find balance in life, even when it comes to striving for perfection in the work you do and the photos you make.
Living The Best Life You Can
Of course while perfection is desirable, it’s rarely attainable. But that's not to say you shouldn’t have extremely high goals in life.
My view is that it’s important to aim for a degree of perfection in the areas that are most important to you, but not to get bogged down in minutia or details that few folk will notice or appreciate.
Just get on with it and do the very best you can, given your talent, the resources that are available to you and the timeframe required to complete the task at hand.
When it comes to photography projects, whether commercial or personal, it’s important to meet the deadlines that have been set.
Hopefully your photos are well received and you reap a financial reward. If not, you’ve most likely pushed yourself beyond your previous limits and set a new benchmark for yourself and the photos you create going forward.
I cannot over stress the need to meet deadlines and get your work finished in a timely and efficient manner. It’s one of the major reasons why many very successful wedding photographers choose to make images with their camera set to JPEG, rather than RAW.
A photographer who’s workflow is based around camera-generated JPEG files needs to rely on their camera skills, a good sense of composition and being able to work with the intensity, quality, direction, contrast and color of light they find themselves working under.
Alternatively, capturing images in RAW is about providing a safety net that provides you with greater opportunities to craft your images in post processing, albeit in a far more labor intensive manner.
You see, while it’s necessary to post process RAW images, that’s not the case with camera-generated JPEG files.
Are those photographers shooting in JPEG potentially diminishing the final quality of their images?
Absolutely!
Will their customers know or suspect the photographer didn’t photograph with their camera set to RAW?
Almost certainly not.
Does that mean that their customers will be disappointed by getting (hopefully) well made images from camera-generated JPEG files soon after they return from their honeymoon?
Absolutely not!
During my early years in the photography industry I worked as a wedding/portrait photographer. I’m talking early 80’s, when film based photography reigned supreme.
I used to make around 100 pictures at a wedding. Nowadays professional photographers often shoot 1,000 or more (sometimes far more) photos at a wedding.
I’m glad I got out of the wedding photography business decades ago. It’s where most aspiring professional photographs start, and I photographed around 250 weddings in my time, so I’m not without experience.
However, being quality driven, I’d feel compromised photographing a wedding these days. However, since embracing a fully digital workflow back in 2006, my days as a film based photographer are long gone.
I love digital photography, particularly when using my Sony A1 mirrorless camera set to RAW. But I’d find it terribly hard to photograph a wedding, even if I was to limit myself to (say) a coverage containing around 500 photos.
Frankly, even taking into account an extensive coverage of the reception, I couldn’t image myself taking more than 300 photos for the entire day.
You know what they say, when it comes to quality, less really is more.
But when it comes to the quality, effort, price paradigm there’s no doubt that it’s hard for most enthusiast level photographers to make a wedding pay if they’re photographing with their camera set to RAW.
Doing so means every image you’re going to keep now needs to be processed prior to exporting (i.e., Save As) as a JPEG or TIFF for your customer or the lab that’s printing your photos.
If you know what you’re doing, when it comes to exposing the images in camera and post processing the resulting files on your computer, you’re better off leaving your camera set to RAW. That is if quality really is your primary aim.
But the time it will take you to post process those files will likely make undertaking the job far less appealing and, frankly, not worth your time given what you’re likely charging for such a difficult, stressful and time consuming job.
This is why so many photographers choose a workflow based around producing camera-generated JPEG files. Do a good job managing exposure, contrast, lighting and white balance and you might get away with no or very few adjustments to the files in post processing applications like Adobe Lightroom.
Just remember that less time on the computer means a more profitable job, albeit at the expense of potentially lower quality images compared to what you might achieve with a theoretically superior, though less efficient, RAW workflow.
It should be no surprise that many talented photographers have struggled financially until they married and their partner brought in the business acumen required to allow the photographer's own artistic endeavors to thrive within a successful commercial enterprise.
When running a business it's largely the customer's perceptions of product quality and service, rather than that of the photographer, that’s of critical importance.
Now that should be a lesson to the artist in us all.
Solitary penguin in Antarctica and how to live your best life.
Perfection In The World Of Social Media
How does the world of social media impact on your journey to live the best life you can?
The frequency at which images on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook are displayed and consumed makes it all but impossible to be able to post images that are always the very best you can produce.
Should that be a concern?
“May the holes in your net be no larger than the fish in it.”
Not at all, providing that both the maker and those that consume the images can separate an image prepared for social media from evergreen content on a quality blog post or a fine art print sold to a collector.
One is an indication of what that photographer can produce while the others, particularly the fine art print, are realizations of that potential determined by the image quality of the physical print, its tactile nature and presentation.
What's more, by limiting the availability of the work, for example as a limited edition print, its perceived value may be elevated to a new level.
The point here is to invest your time and energy in different ways, and at different levels of intensity, dependent upon the outcome.
But how can the work we display, via social media, help our development as artists?
By posting frequently we're able to experiment and test a range of techniques and styles. This approach helps us develop bodies of work that reflect our own unique identity and worldview.
Of course, social media has the potential to help us photographers find our niche and connect with a specific audience, including potential customers within the larger marketplace.
All in all I think it’s okay for photographers to post their photos on social media. You just need to be clear as to why you’re doing so, and then develop a strategy that takes you, bit by bit, closer to the goals you’ve set for yourself.
Needless to say, with only 24 hours in a day, be careful not to lose yourself inside the social media bubble.
Why You Need To Keep Perfection In Perspective
Don't be overly concerned about perfection. By its very nature it is unattainable. It's important to strive for it, but not to let it become a barrier to image making.
In other words, just because you can't reach your goals today, doesn't mean it should stop you from trying and learning from your mistakes. Therein lies the concept of constant improvement.
You make photographs knowing that by doing so, again and again, your photography will improve and your journey towards the perfect image remains on track.
That’s why it’s so important to keep the ultimate goal of perfection in perspective. As long as you’re moving towards it, with each and every photo or project you undertake, then you’re moving in the right direction.
To that end I'm suddenly reminded of a fun saying.
“There is only one way to eat an elephant:
a bite at a time.”
How to live your best life? The Louvre museum in Paris, France.
What's Your Opinion Of The Creative Process?
It's probably a hang over from my Catholic upbringing, but part of me believes that suffering is often a part of the creative process. Suffering makes us who we are and there's a certain, grim satisfaction in finishing a project, particularly a hands-on one, that’s been made possible through the time, labor, dedication and money you’ve invested into it.
But my upbringing also tells me to be humble about my achievements and, without lingering, take any lessons learned with me and quietly move onto the next project.
It Is Important To Dream, But It's Critical To Plan
Failing to plan is a sure way to excel at failure. And for those folks scared of failure I'd like to suggest that you simply begin the task at hand.
Just remember that nothing's written in stone and not all projects need to be completed. It's what you learn along the way that, more often than not, matters most. But you’ll never get anywhere if you don’t get up and make a start.
Ideas are great, but it’s actions that change the world.
Just have a plan and be prepared to amend it as required. Seek advice and, where appropriate, ask for help. But just get going and begin moving forward, without feeling the need to trumpet your plans and desired outcomes to the world.
I say that because it’s almost always best to be near the end of completing your project and being ready to share it with others before you start marketing it. Sure, there are exceptions, but for most folks it’s more important to walk the walk before you begin to talk the talk.
And don't let all this advice get in the way of just starting something. Come on, get cracking!
Conclusion: Perfection and Living Your Best Life
I wish you well on your own journey making remarkable art. Just don't let the quest for perfection stop you from creating in the first place, learning from your mistakes and applying what you’ve learned into your next creation.
It's life, after all. You can stand on the sidelines and criticize others, or you can get out on the field of play and experience the great game for yourself. You're bound to cop a few knocks for your trouble but, when the game is over, you can leave the field of play knowing you did your very best.
I believe that's what it means to truly please yourself and to live your best life.
With that in mind, I’d say that participating at your highest level is a better outcome to strive for than perfection which, by its very nature, is unattainable.
You see as you improve you’ll, inevitably, set higher standards for yourself. As a result you may never be completely happy with what you’ve accomplished.
This knowledge should lead to the understanding that perfection should be aspirational, rather than an end goal in itself.
Sadly, that’s the kind of basic wisdom that can take years of effort and hardship to learn. I pass it onto you now in the hope that it can help shape your own philosophy and approach to creating beautiful, life affirming photos and, through doing so, help you live the best life you can.
