Photo Challenge 19: Letting Go of Perfect
Let’s face it. Sometimes we’re not perfect.
Well, I can’t speak for you. I’m not perfect. I might like to put up a good front, but I’m not.
Sometimes the shot that I have in my head…just doesn’t quite make it into my camera.
So this week’s challenge is ‘letting go of perfect.’ It could be an “outtake,” or it could be something beautiful that itself isn’t quite perfect.
I recruited my friend, the amazing Bryn Clark of Moxie Blue Photography, for this week’s challenge.
This first image is of Lyndsi and Antonio at their reception. They were coming into the reception to their “victory” music and everyone is cheering them on, they whipped past me and I grabbed this shot of Antonio looking directly at the camera. It was unexpected and I wasn’t ready, but I grabbed it anyway. There is terrible motion blur, and it’s not even cropped with any type of forethought, but this photo has been Lyndsi’s profile picture on Facebook for a very long time. They love it. I love it. There’s this organic moment that’s real and captured in this photo that the bride and groom don’t ever want to forget. You can see how both of them feel at that very second and it’s perfect in its imperfection.
This second image is completely imperfect to a point where it frustrates me. I’m an underwater photographer as well and this is a photo of two girls, not one. Jessica is dressed as Poison Ivy, a villain in the Batman franchise, so she was playing the part of the bad guy. Joy and her were having a “battle” underwater, when they both floated to the top. I kept this image after much deliberation because I love the perfect expression on Jessica and her “no paparazzi” posture in her hand. It’s been one of my favorite underwater captures for a long time. If you keep pausing on an image that you think is imperfect, but something is there for you, listen to your gut. Or your heart. It’s a keeper if it keeps stopping you enough to wonder about it.
The third image is more personal, this shows that you should also shoot the imperfect moments in your life as well, to remember that not everything was picking strawberries and sunflares. This was taken 4 years ago with my little Canon Rebel on a walk, my two year old was behaving like only a two year old would and had a meltdown when he realized we were going back in from our walk. He threw himself down on the grass and just pitched a fit. And I shot it. Every little minute of that tantrum is documented for me to look back on and remember the trying times as well as the amazing ones. So this is Yorick… unabashedly Yorick.
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