The perfect shot is a lie
When you see a really great food photo, when you watch a cooking show, see those travel photos, notice those instagram or Facebook photos where everybody is happy or having a perfect framing, then you are seeing lies.
And you know they are lies because if you ever done the same, you know it didn’t work out exactly like that.
If you ever tried to capture a perfect shot of your cake, you struggled with the light, had to climb a chair to get a photo from the top or the arrangement wasn’t quite right. At least not like in that perfect photo you’ve seen.
If you’ve ever tried that same lasagna recipe as in a cooking episode, you know there were things not shown in the show. Lacking some ingredients, the kids roaming around, the dishes after. And maybe it came out as expected, maybe it didn’t.
Or if you were ever in Paris and you were excited about visiting the Eiffel tower, you had to sit in line for quite a while to get up the elevator, while you were trying to take cover from the heat. And maybe you noticed how busy the boulevards nearby were, with lots of cars in traffic, honking, polluting. Or maybe you just had an argument with your partner and you didn’t get to enjoy the view from the top of the Eiffel tour. Not to mention that every time you look at the photos you took while up there remind you of those annoying moments.
So next time you see a perfect shot, remember that it’s a lie. It took a million photos to get one right, lots of waiting, trying, preparation and so on. Most of us normal people don’t have the perfect shots. Most of us, most of the time, we have some imperfect light and a somewhat satisfactory result with photos of food or travel highlights.
We’re not the only ones experiencing this. Most of us are. And we can take comfort in knowing this. But most of us are not admitting or talking about this, to laugh at the situations and be united by those experiences and feelings. And because we don’t talk about them, we feel like we’re the only ones. But when we do open up and share how we feel, we learn that others feel very much the same way.
