In the Pursuit of Perfection

Are we losing something?

I spent a few hours today scanning some old color slides.

I brought them into Lightroom and slowly looked through them.

Many weren’t sharp.

Some had people with limbs cut off.

The color casts from those old film days? Let’s just say “questionable.”

And yet… I kept looking.

It got me thinking about this idea of perfection—and how obsessed we’ve all become with it.

More megapixels.

Tack-sharp images.

No distractions.

And of course… noise. God forbid we have noise

.

So where am I going with all this?

Maybe—just maybe—we need to relax a little.

Instead of asking: “Is it sharp enough?”

What if we asked:

“Does it speak to me?”

“Do I feel something?”

Does that slightly soft focus really ruin the image?

Does that stray tree branch actually matter?

Or are we just trained to think it does?

If perfection is the goal…then why does Lightroom have presets that

Add grain?

Add color casts?

Mimic old film?

Why do we look at those old photographs—with all their flaws—and feel something?

This whole idea of perfection actually reminds me of Hollywood actors.

In their pursuit of perfection, some of them end up looking… well… a little plastic.

A little too smooth.

A little too perfect.

And somewhere along the way, they lose the very thing that made them beautiful in the first place.

Modern photography is starting to feel a bit like that.

Technically flawless. Polished. Perfect.

But sometimes… just a little empty.

Because:

People don’t connect with pixels.

They connect with feeling.

At some point…

we stopped taking photographs and started manufacturing them.

And maybe this is the part that matters most:

Perfection removes friction.

And friction is where feeling lives.

A little blur = movement

A little noise = atmosphere

A missed “perfect” exposure = mood

A human mistake = connection

Because at the end of the day…

A boring 100MP photo is still… boring.

And a technically perfect image can be stunning…

and completely forgettable.