when is it OK to have flaws in a photograph/negative, or is it never OK ?

[markbarendt]

I can't go back and take the picture of Dad, Ava and Princess Summer again because Princess Summer has passed on...

(Links to galleries break, so if you are a subscriber and want to see this picture, look in the Gallery, within my images, look for Dad, Ava and Princess Summer.)


Flaws? Well the chief flaw is my father is out of focus. But the picture stands OK with me as a glimpse of his love for small animals and the joy that is natural, seeing a cherished trait passed along from father to son to grand daughter.

If there is a flaw that I see ruins a picture at a basic level, and I have the ability to re-take it. I will. I've told the story of a picture I took of a friend where I can tell who he is, but a baseball cap covered his face so another friend didn't recognize him. So I retook that one the following year when we had the same father-daughter campout. Still yet to be developed and printed. But it's in the can.

Bill I'll make the assumption that you took the original picture and made that focus error.

Isn't it nice to know that "you" were in the picture too?

That photo makes you feel something, without the flaw and the irreplaceability, the photo would be less special.

Technical perfection doesn't always improve the result.

 

[removed account4]

hi bill

while your dad might be out of "critical focus" ... i don't see that as a flaw at all -
i guess as the person who took the photograph you had to decide with whatever light iso film
&c you had you had to think fast to decide what to focus on. focus on your daughter, the rat and your dad might be out of critical focus
focus on the rat your dad and daughter might be out of focus, focus on your dad and your daughter might be out of focus ...
i think it was you ( maybe i am wrong ) that said recently that photography is a whole bunch of compromises ...
i think the bigger picture in your photograph is in full focus, your dad passing down his love for small animals to another generation.
i can understand your noticing the flaw, but i don't see a flaw at all .. maybe it is because i am not "close" to the picture and its subjects ...

 

[Vaughn]

I think the rules for art are more akin to those of quantum physics.

Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it. Niels Bohr

But my favorite:

Atoms are not things. Werner Heisenberg

 

[pdeeh]

the world is composed of facts not things -- Wittgenstein

 

[MattKing]

When I think about the subject of this thread, I start thinking about the music of Tom Waits.

 

[Bill Burk]

hi bill

while your dad might be out of "critical focus" ... i don't see that as a flaw at all -
....
i think it was you ( maybe i am wrong ) that said recently that photography is a whole bunch of compromises ...

i think the bigger picture in your photograph is in full focus, your dad passing down his love for small animals to another generation.
...

The bigger flaw I forgot to mention: Princess' face is turned away. Rats move fast that's for sure.

(I may have said that, if not I wish I had because I believe photography is a whole bunch of compromises).

I went back to take another portrait of Ava with Princess Summer, so I have the little rat's cute face. She really was a sweetheart, she hung onto life, never got mean even towards the end when a tumor made it hard for her to even reach up to her water (that was when we knew).

I meant that photograph to be an example where despite any and all the flaws, the photograph is OK.

Despite all that is wrong with it... nothing is wrong with it.

I'm reading Sally Mann's "Hold Still" and I'm at the part where she regrets not having any really good photographs of her father that show who he was. I consider myself lucky for this picture.