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Photo Story of the Week: This Tuesday Kevin Balanda wanders close to home along the coastline of Glengarriff, County Cork.

An overcast day in Glengarriff Harbour and the pursuit of “perfection” 

I am very lucky to live in a very beautiful part of the world.

Landscape photographers tend to love beautiful sweeping vistas. More generally; photographers pursue “perfection” in their images. Frequently, even the most minor “imperfections” in a photo can render it worthless to them. 

Recently I took my camera to the beautiful Glengarriff Harbour in West Cork. But the weather turned, the day became dull and overcast, and the light “flat”. I almost went home but instead turned to the water washing against the seawall. This is a photo of the swishing seaweed and the swirling leaves in the water at the bottom of a small concrete boat ramp. A little photo-editing brought out the colours and movement that were in the water. It was not the photo of the stunning vista that I had hoped to bring home. 

The pursuit of “perfection” dominates not just photography but much of our lives. This obsession is driven in part by social media and business. The style of much of the visual imagery we now view is formulated with the growing assistance from artificial intelligence. It has become formulaic – “nice” but not that interesting. Many feel it is destroying creativity, our spirit and what it means to be human.

Some view this as part of a very large well-orchestrated marketting effort to create a pervasive sense of inadequacy within all of us. We are forced to constantly compare our simple lives and surroundings to this increasingly manufactured “perfection”. The perceived gap most of us feel between our circumstances and this manufactured “perfection” means that businesses can then step in and create commodities that they claim can fill this gap. While this unsatiable demand is destroying our planet, this commercially driven sense of inadequacy also leads many to overwhelming despondency; driving conflict and mental health problems in our communities.

Of course, none of this is new or a major revelation. This photo is not particularly memorable although it is a pleasant enough colour abstract. However; I love it because it is a timely reminder to me to enjoy the simpler, smaller, less “perfect” things in my world.

 

 

Photographic specifications: The  focal length was set to 55 mm. Camera settings were selected to allow a long exposure: ISO 100, f/22, 0.5 s. It was edited in Lightroom.

© Kevin Balanda

 

This story / page is available in: German