Imperfectly human

Music has always been a huge part of my life. I was a radio DJ for many years, and station manager for quite a chunk of that time. I love unsigned bands, that lack the polish of the big production that a record label adds. The rawness and imperfections add to my enjoyment, not take away from it. Over the last couple of decades, autotune has dominated. Perfect pitch is seen as the ideal for music production. Yet to me these songs sound lifeless. The pitch moves unnaturally from one perfect note to the next, lacking any flow. If you just use the metric of perfect pitch, many of the truly great singers aren’t good singers. Yet we still admire the likes of Dylan, Knopfler, Lennon, and others. Their voices flow through the songs, grabbing your attention, and moving seamlessly between notes. Their songs are relatable stories instead of musical perfection.

So what does this have to do with photography? We can apply the same approach to our pictures. If we judge pictures solely on the ‘rules’ of composition, then we can lose the emotion from the image. Sometimes aligning something perfectly on a third is the wrong place for it. Sometimes a little distraction can add balance.

The closer we get to perfection, the further we get from human.