That new lens you just bought, bitingly sharp isn’t it? It’s cutting edge, using the latest optical technology, advanced coatings and complex mechanical engineering. Yet, the images you take from it, lack something.
They are unbelievably sharp, edge to centre at all apertures, yet the images lack spark, they seem clinical. Welcome to the world of perfect photography, it’s a world that we and the manufacturers have striven for for decades. However, now it’s here, it all feels a little disappointing.
Of course, I am exaggerating a little, but the point is that modern digital photography, the way it’s taught and the techniques we use, all feel a little sterile. With advanced cameras doing a lot of the lifting for us, it’s quite hard for us to make our own mistakes. Very often those little mistakes can be the key to images that really stand out. So today, and with just the slightest amount of irony, we are going to take a look at how to take imperfect pictures.
The Fogged Film Effect
If you have ever shot film, now or in the past, you will know about light leaks. The light on edges of the film bleeding into the frame. It’s an imperfection that lends authenticity to an image, a feeling that this is a real image taken by a real person. If you watch any tv program that uses faux old footage as part of its intro you will see this effect a thousand times. Along with dust and scratches, these are added to the digital footage in post production to give a “real” feel.
The Japanese have a name for this, Wabi-Sabi. In simple terms it means finding beauty in imperfection. It’s why we find the fogged film, dirty lens, or scratched negative look so appealing.
It goes deeper though, those imperfections in an image draw us in emotionally. A prime example of this would be the photographs of Robert Capa on D-Day. Many of them have motion blur, or camera shake. This could be intentional but it could be that the film of the time was not fast and he simply could not get the shutter speed high enough. Either way he created some of the most powerful images of, not only World War 2, but perhaps of all time. The reason is simple, those imperfections make us feel like we are there. Those images are one of the primary reasons that the opening scene of Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan is regarded as the most realistic depiction of war ever filmed, much of his inspiration came from Capa’s photography.
Adding Imperfections
Living in a digital age it can be hard to accidentally create imperfect images, however we can use intention to add imperfection. Let’s look at some ideas for doing that.
The first is a quite popular technique in recent years called Intentional Camera Movement or ICM. This is where we find our subject, set a slow shutter speed and move the camera in a predefined direction in order to add both motion and emotion to an image. It’s often used in landscape photography, particularly in woodland scenes, but it can be used on many subjects.
An extension of that would be to simply lower the shutter speed on the camera for all the shots you want to take. This is a more unintentional look but can lead to some excellent “happy accidents” particularly if panning the camera.
Another idea is to intentionally raise the ISO. We, and the camera manufacturers, have striven to eliminate noise in our images, but this often leads us to the sterile digital look. Instead, we can raise that ISO and allow a little noise into our shots. For this to work it needs to be done in the right lighting. Raising ISO on a bright sunny day is going to give us noisy images that look out of place. However, using grey, overcast light or even low light will give us a much more authentic look to the noise.
Another route we can use is to take our cameras out of autofocus. By switching to manual focus, we are already introducing the human element to our shots. Our own eyes are imperfect and in some cases the focus might be slightly off or on the wrong part of the subject, an imperfection like this adds character and emotion to an image
Using Older Gear
I am very much an advocate of older lenses on newer cameras, indeed I have written about it recently. These days there are very few lens/camera combinations that are not catered for. I have had old Canon FD lenses on both Panasonic G and Fuji X mounts. More recently I have dabbled with Minolta MD on Sony FE.
Some of these old lenses are stunning, some not so, yet all have a hard to describe aesthetic. You might call it the film look, you might call it soft or even diffused. What they all do however is add those imperfections to your images. In a recent video compared a Minolta 35-70mm to a modern Sony 24-105 on a 61mp camera. The Minolta lens simply looked better, less clinical, more natural.
Older digital cameras also have imperfections, lower dynamic range, more noise. There is a plethora of old cameras for sale at reasonable prices, all capable of giving a less than clinical look to your images.
The Human Element
There is another very good reason for striving for imperfection in your photography, A.I. The rise of A.I. imaging is unstoppable, but the images it produces as well as being fake are also often utterly perfect. That clinical perfection is often one way to spot such images.
By embracing imperfection we are giving authenticity to our work, signalling the human element and intent. That’s going to be a very important aspect of photography going forward.
Modern digital photography, combined with social media inspires us to strive for the perfect image. Yet, whilst the perfect shot doesn’t exist, the technical perfection of modern digital camera can give us sterile looking images.
By using some of the techniques above and perhaps setting our cameras to more manual modes, we can reintroduce a more human element to our images. And in a world of A.I., that can only be a good thing.
