Are you ever completely satisfied with an image?

[Leigh]

(Speaking here of field work, not studio)

As I get older I find myself reviewing images, noting things that could have been done better or differently, then going back and re-shooting the scene to incorporate those changes.

This seems to be more common with LF (especially 8x10) than MF, possibly because there's more detail in the negatives (shooting only B&W).

Do others suffer from this affliction?

Is it a quest for perfection, or a symptom of senility?

- Leigh

[vinny]

Yes. It took quite a lot of paper to get where i'm at now though.

[cyrus]

Nope never satisfied with a print. I can't do much about the negative but I spend days working on a print and then even when if I get to the point that I can't improve on it, I'm too exhausted with it to make more than a single "best" print.

[johnmsanderson]

not really. i have to remind myself to settle at a certain point of the editing process because i could go on forever changing this color cast or increase some contrast somewhere.

i find it easier to be satisfied when editing a monochrome image than a color image.

(digital workflow w/ film)

[sanchi heuser]

Leigh,

that's the quest for perfection or maybe one can say it's the quest to
get a picture as near as possible to your idea how a good picture should be.
Lucky if you can see it at location what could be improved.
Andreas Feininger gave the advice to make different pictures from a motif
and that's the work worth when the motif is interessting enough for you.

[Brian Vuillemenot]

Only a handful (maybe 4 or 5) out of thousands made in the last decade or so.

[Michael Alpert]

Leigh,

Yes, I am satisfied with some of my photographs. But being satisfied is a matter of temperament and attitude, not of artistic accomplishment. If you were to ask, "Have you produced photographic prints that are artistically worthwhile?" your question would hinge on more objective values. I work as an editor. I often encounter writers who cannot see their work from a reader's point of view. This limitation hurts them as writers and as human beings. I think it is also important that visual artists develop the ability to see their work as if they did not personally create it. By looking at work more objectively (using the criteria of photography's historical legacy), the question of satisfaction or dissatisfaction becomes less relevant.

[Brian Ellis]

One of the reasons I abandoned the darkroom and starting printing 100% digitally was because I'd look at my old darkroom prints and almost always see subtle improvements that could be made in Photoshop that would be impossible in the darkroom.

[Leigh]

I often encounter writers who cannot see their work from a reader's point of view.

Hi Michael,

I've taught many (many) classes, and made presentations to large auditoriums (auditoria?) in international settings.

Communicating information to the audience is a lot different than speaking at the audience. There's an element of understanding, even when it's not in the form of questions and answers, that can be missed by those less familiar with that scenario.

I think the same communication exists between the photographer and the viewer, so I try to assess my images in this context. In that environment self-assessment is even more important because you can't observe the viewer's reaction and response.

Thanks for your insight.

- Leigh

[Bill Burk]

Hi Leigh,

A great deal of my motivation is exploration and discovery. It is critical for me to do the best I can the first time. Because I know the next time I arrive on a scene that I have already photographed, even if it is years later, I see the shot I took the first time.

The first time I saw a certain uprooted tree near a ledge in the Sierra, it reminded me of Rodin's "The Gates of Hell" that I had seen at Stanford. The slides I took that day are evocative and add to a pleasing show. When I walked past it with 4x5 a few years back, I was possesed by a trivial feeling. It was "oh yea, the gates of hell." I walked past and hiked out. Looking back I see that I didn't take a significant picture from that moment to the end of the trip. I re-visited a grotto-like scene and saw it in stark insignificance, a minor scene lacking the beauty I found earlier.

This is not depressing because there are more miles of trails than I can ever walk, and a scene does not require grandeur to be worth my attention.