Perfection Was Never the Point:

There was a time when I thought every photograph had to be perfect.

Perfect focus.
Perfect composition.
Perfect exposure.
Perfect timing.

I spent years trying to remove every flaw from my photographs, believing that if I could just get everything technically right, I would create better images. How wrong was I. And the longer I photograph, the more I realise that isn't what moves me.

When I look back through the work of photographers I admire, many of my favourite images aren't perfect at all. Some aren't critically sharp. Some have awkward framing. Others contain distractions or movement that would fail any technical checklist.

Yet they stay with me.

Why? “Because they make me feel something”

Photography only exists because a moment existed for a fraction of a second. When the shutter clicks, life doesn't pause so that everything can line up perfectly. People move. Light changes. A glance appears and disappears. A shadow falls across a face. Someone walks into the frame.

That is real life.

Trying to make every photograph technically flawless can sometimes strip away the very thing that made the moment worth photographing in the first place. I'd much rather come home with an image that tells a story than one that simply proves how sharp my lens is.

Don't get me wrong, good technique matters. Understanding light, composition and exposure gives us the tools to recognise a photograph when it appears. But those things are only the language.

The message is the moment.

Some of my favourite photographs have tiny imperfections that remind me I was there. A hand isn't quite where I'd like it. Someone is slightly blurred. The framing isn't mathematically balanced. None of that matters.

What matters is that, for one split second, something ordinary became unforgettable.

Many photographers, spend so much time discussing equipment, autofocus speed, lens sharpness and megapixels. to me they're not interesting conversations, I've come to realise they're rarely what makes me stop and look at a photograph.

Emotion, Atmosphere, Curiosity does.

A photograph that makes me wonder what happened just before or just after the shutter clicked will always hold my attention longer than one that's technically perfect but emotionally empty.

Perhaps perfection isn't something we should be chasing, perhaps our job is simply to notice, to recognise those small, fleeting moments that most people walk past.

Because in the end of the day, nobody remembers a photograph because it scored ten out of ten for sharpness.

They remember only how it made them feel.