Image Quality, Image Quality, Image Quality
downtown atlanta
Sometimes all we hear is about how clear an image needs to be. Photographers can become obsessed with noise reduction and eliminating blur. Perfect lighting can be all one cares about. I know. I have done it plenty. However, taking a break from posting in this blog made me realize that my photography is mine. I need to worry about impressions or living up to standards. So what if it never wins a contest. I find this picture beautiful. That is all that matters.
Richard replied:
“Image quality” means one thing to a lens or camera manufacturer, or to an equipment reviewer. This meaning is made more precise by making it very finite.
Yet the meaning of an image is a lot more than that. We work to master objective “image quality” so that we will have those tools available for when they are appropriate to our meaning. Some photographs benefit from a full tonal range, deep depth-of-field and sharp detail, while these qualities are irrelevant to other, perhaps more meaningful images. The artist chooses what is relevant and not relevant to the meaning they wish to convey….and often that’s a matter of selectively cutting out all distractions.
Which is a long way of agreeing with you, that if your goal is beauty, that’s a much different thing than any objective “image quality”, which should be noticeable only when it serves an expressive purpose.
March.25.2009 at 1:09 pm. Permalink.