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In my eyes, this is a perfect photograph! I know it's a subjective thought, but I really feel this way.
Most of you are familiar with the fact that this "Perfect" image almost single-handedly inspired
"The Perfect Career". A young Cartier-Bresson saw this image by Martin Munkacsi, and saw for
the first time the full potential of the Leica. I started to think about this image in terms of the way it
was made, versus some of today's image making techniques. In 1929, if someone took a picture
of this quality, it was either by luck or as in this case, talent and luck. Today, someone might take a
few shots of some kids playing in the surf, and if he or she wanted to use photoshop, a few very
mediocre images could be combined with a lot of care, into a similar and I suppose "Perfect"
image. There are two trains of thought here...The end justifies the means, which many people a lot
smarter than me believe, and of course my thought that, to be able to see something which exists
in the world and capture it, is very special because of this inherent truth within the photograph.
I realize how incredible a tool photoshop is, having fooled around with it for six years. It bores me!
The special effects leave me cold and do nothing for me at all. It's strange that I should feel this way,
since I normally embrace technology as it unfolds, but I feel that turning a half-ass photo into a
great one, is somehow missing the point. Of course I am WRONG and must feel threatened, that any
one who has a $1,500 DSLR can take images with far better definition than I can, and with a
modicum of skill in photoshop, can do things I could only dream of doing the old fashioned way.
I still hope to one day "take" a perfect photograph, even if the tools to "make" one already exist.
So after sharpening, un-sharpening or even re-sharpening and clicking on the Gaussian blur, if you
start to feel like you're a modern day Rembrandt, maybe you are...I just want to take one photograph
like the one above, and in ten years when today's millions of pixels have been replaced with billions,
this photograph by Munkacsi, will still be... STATE OF THE ART!
