Perceptive Photographer Episode 11: Hot Sauce and Photography

Hosted by Daniel j Gregory

May 25, 2015

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What the heck is this week's podcast about?

PerceptivePhotographerWeblogoPerceptive Photographer Episode 11: Hot Sauce and Photography

While having a few conversations with friends over the past few weeks, I was reminded that good photography is about great images. Those images are not great because of the way they are processed but rather the content they contain. What that means is that we can’t just take a mediocre image and hope that there is some secret sauce out there that will fix it up and make it palatable. Just like with food, when something isn’t that great all the HDR hot sauce, Pano mustard or stylized ketchup won’t make a bland image flavorful. It might spice it up for a second, but real flavor comes in the cooking and not just what we pour on top.

As working photographers I think we have an intrinsic understanding of what we have in an image and if it is good or not, but sometimes in a effort to deal with our memory of a person, place or thing we try to make the image more than it really is when in fact the photograph has no memory it is just an object. The issue with that is our viewer doesn’t have that association they only have the image. They only know what we put on the plate in front of them, and our goal should be to make sure that when they look at the image, they don’t even think about if it has any sauce on top.

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