When a bad photograph is better than a good one
I had once again found myself crashing at a Buddhist monastery in Thailand with my trusty Fujifilm X100T in tow; a rangefinder-style camera that looked like something from the 1950s with a 35mm prime lens. We were lining up for our morning meal and I saw a moment I wanted to capture but the sun was directly in the shot, the bain of photographers. So I tried to make the best of the situation and stopped down to f/16, framed it up and took the image. People loved this highly flawed photo almost more than any other photo I'd taken before.
But why was it so liked? As a photojournalist and landscape photographer I've always been keen to follow the rules of a good photograph which meant not over or under exposing an image and retaining a pleasing tonality. To try to capture a technically as close to perfect image as possible. But while following those rules I lost the passion and value of that fleeting moment. The above image is technically flawed but to the viewer it captured something special: a moment in time soon to be lost.
I consider myself to be a technically skilled photographer but not a creative one. While for most of my life I blamed it on having to follow the rules of photography and writing it was me all along. I refused to let go of those constraints and used them as an excuse. For many years I've been a writer. First as a photojournalist, then a code jockey and technical writer where the rules could never be broken.
But one day with my writing I started to break the rules. In photojournalism the "AP Style Guide" was once my writing bible with rules that could never be questioned. No innuendo, double entendres or independent clauses. Simple words, sentences, paragraphs and stories to cater to someone that most likely read your work while doing something else. One day that ended when I decided to write a travel and food inspired novella of about 20,000 words. While comfortable writing two to three thousand word stories 20,000 words seemed almost impossible but I tried and never gave up.
Everyday without fail and with joy I woke up and almost ran downstairs to my kitchen, made a carafe of coffee and started writing and I didn't stop; twelve to sixteen hour days, seven days a week for about two months I wrote. In the end I had written about 120,000 words which was later culled to about 80,000. What I wrote was flawed and broke a few rules. Certainly I followed the rules of grammar but in two passages I broke with them by purposely switching verb tense from past to present and the view from the protagonist's to the reader's to better drive home the feelings I wanted to convey. And it worked.
When all you create follows someone else's rules then nothing you create will be your own. Rules are meant to make a creative work perfect but the truth is no one or thing is perfect. When we create something with flaws we show to the viewer and reader that we're the same: imperfect creatures and at that moment we create a common bond.
By the rules of good photography and good writing are my works flawed? Yes and that's what makes them special. It captures something that being technically flawless can't: the beauty of imperfection.
Wabi-sabi: When bad photos are better
Image: Monks waiting for morning meal at Plum Village Thailand in monochrome. Pak Chong, Thailand. Fujifilm X100T. image: ©Brian Beeler
