The Perfect Shot Doesn’t Exist
I have been going to the same gym for over a year now - I won’t comment on the average frequency I have been over that period, though I can say with certainty that it is not as much as I’d like!
A few doors down from the gym there is a rather dilapidated looking Showcase Cinema that I am yet to walk into. However, every time I pass by, I have a thought that it would make for some fantastic photos. The outside of the cinema is fitted with huge Neon signs and has a retro magnetic board spanning the façade, displaying what is being shown inside. Though a bit run-down, I have always been drawn to the look of the building. For over a year, I have walked past the cinema week after week, seeing it in the dead of winter, alight in the darkness and at the height of summer, standing tall against sunny and blue skies.
Most photographers would agree that it becomes second nature to start viewing at the world as a series of photographs you’d like to take - every fleeting moment or previously unseen angle begging to be immortalised in the form of a photograph. You walk around with what I call ‘Phantom Camera Syndrome’, thinking of possible shots, even when you’re not carrying a camera with you. It is tough to walk past a reflection in a window or a particularly interesting building without imagining what kind of photograph you could make. In my head, each time I walked past this cinema, I knew exactly the shot I wanted to take; flat on, the sun reflecting off the notice boards, with the Neon lights glowing as the sun sets and the sky is lit up a warm orange. The image I wanted to take burnt into my mind each and every time I walked past on a nice evening and each time I wouldn't photograph it because I refused to take a hulking great camera with me to the gym.
Of course, I attempted to capture the image on my smartphone (I’m not immune to the urge), but like many other images you have pictured in your head, a smartphone camera just didn't do it justice. I knew I wanted to make the image with a telephoto lens, to achieve the compression effect between foreground and background and I knew the angle I wanted the shot to be taken from would require me to be stood in the middle of the road - something I was unwilling to do on the way into the gym using my phone.
Attempt at capturing the image using my smartphone.
The image remained untaken and in my imagination until only the other day. It was 7pm on a Friday, the sun was out and I was sat at home, looking out of the window. I had no plans and the sky looked primed for a good sunset. I knew this would be the evening I took my camera gear and made a specific trip to get the shot! I had the gear, I had the time and I had the sunset - the light bounced off the cinema’s façade exactly how I imagined it, the sky lit up a pink-orange. Everything was in place. I lifted the camera viewfinder to my eye, pressed the shutter release, took a look at the image preview on my display and… “Oh… this wasn’t what I imagined”. I tried again, from another angle, with another lens, after 10 minutes with the sun setting further still and… “Hmm, it’s still not what I expected. Maybe it’ll look different with some editing”. I waited a day (a great tip I picked up from photographer Craig Whitehead’s Skillshare class is to wait a day, two days, or even a week before editing photos to remove any emotional connection to certain images and edit with fresh eyes) before opening up my laptop to edit the shots - still, no different.
The image I had burnt into my head was not what I was looking at on my laptop screen. The months of envisaging and formulating the shot in my head meant that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t capture the photograph I had in my head. Nothing I could have made would live up to the imagined photograph. I thought maybe with a more telescopic zoom, maybe with a drone and some additional height… but finally I came to the realization that it wasn’t to be. Sometimes, the perfect shot doesn’t exist. Our imaginations far exceed what is possible or what you might be capable of with your current level of skill and equipment. But the photograph you have made is no worse than the one you imagine in your head, it is just different and grounded in reality (or at least your reality at the time it was taken). I know the end result might be different if I take it the same photo a year from now or a decade from now, on a different day or with different camera equipment and I may try to get the shot again, but I may never make the photograph I had built up in my head and I think that’s OK! Each attempt will be a reflection of my style of shooting and who I am as a photographer at the time it was taken and while I may never capture the ‘perfect shot’, I’m going to continue to have fun trying.
