Why Do We Continue To Pixel Peep?

Do you look at and enjoy this entire image? (click to enlarge)
Olympus E-M5, Lumix 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 45mm; 1/80th sec. @ f/8; ISO 3200 (2012)

Or do you pixel peep and look at the smallest details to see if you can find something wrong with an image?
Is the idea that there is digital noise in this image more important that the image as a whole?
(click to enlarge)

I am baffled why we continue to “pixel peep” in a time when our cameras, lenses, and other gear are the best they have ever been in the history of photography?  As I have written in the past, there really are no “bad” digital cameras made today.  Not even the point-and-shoot cameras.  Heck, even the cameras in mobile phones will give you good images.  Excellent images can be made from cameras of every price range with every sensor format.

Do you photograph and look at photographs for the pleasure of practicing photography and enjoying the satisfaction of what you and others have made or do you enjoy dissecting images so you can find the smallest flaw and a reason to complain?

I can understand how and why we started to pixel peep in this digital era of photography. Also, I think the predecessor to pixel peeping thrived in the film era as photographers more than non-photographers have always looked excruciatingly closely at their prints.

In this digital era, I believe we started in the early days of digital photography when the debate was raging about which was better—film or digital.  Back then, we looked closely at every square inch of our images at 100% magnification, at least, so we could judge for ourselves to see if digital cameras measured up to what we knew we got from our film cameras.  The two camps of photographers, film and digital, argued endlessly and showed technical defects and minor imperfections in images to bolster their assertions that their chosen medium for making photographic images was, at the time, better.  We looked at extremely small detail, digital noise at all ISOs, sharpness in an image’s center as well at the edges and corners, contrast, color, and every other aspect of our imagery to make comparisons and decide for ourselves if digital had yet measured up and surpassed film in our own judgment.

I hate to tell you this if you are one who is still pixel peeping.  Those days are over.  Our digital cameras have far surpassed the images we made with film.  The best lenses of yesteryear don’t measure up to the lenses we have today in resolution, contrast and color transmission, let alone in aberration, flare and reflection suppression.  But we still pixel peep. Why?

It seems to me, in those days, some of the essence of "photography as art" was lost in sacrifice for "photography as technology."  We largely lost our vision to enjoy the art of photography for the sake of looking at the technical aspects of an image.

Let me ask you a question.  When you find that scene, person, event, action or whatever it was that makes you stop, pull your camera and lens to your eye, compose, focus, set your exposure and finally press that shutter, is the reason you pressed the shutter to record that little tiny bit of detail in the background or was it because the entire scene or subject matter evoked an emotion in you and you wanted to capture it?  Was it for technical reasons or for the entirety of the image and the aesthetic value of the image as a whole?  We you practicing a technological exercise or were you creating art and recording what you felt?

Let’s take a step forward.

Now that emotion evoking scene or subject you photographed is now on your wall as a nice large print, or even just on your monitor.  Do you walk up to it, look excruciatingly closely at it and try to pick it apart for some imagined or minor defects or do you sit there with a grin on your face and feel satisfied that you made an image that is a pleasure to see—as a whole—in its entirely as a work of art?  Is what was important to you when you pressed the shutter the technical quality of your image or it’s artistic or emotional value?  Did you press the shutter for satisfaction or for the purpose of examining your printed image within 6 inches so you could later pick it apart and think about what is wrong with it rather than what is right with it?  Do your create for pleasure to to later be somewhat self-destructive about your art?

What about the magic of the light?  What about the capturing of the split second a balloon bursts?  What about the clear rendition of the thousands of eyes of a fly or the beauty of a butterfly's wings?  What about the blur of moving water?  What about the center of our Milky Way galaxy on a cloudless and moonless night?  Do all of these things take a back seat to technical quality of any particular image?

You may be different from me, but I look at my images and art as a whole, as an emotional experience captured and displayed for mine and others' pleasure and don’t try to identify the smallest technical defects and pick apart my images so I no longer like them.  Why would I do that?  I photograph for pleasure, satisfaction and the enjoyment of capturing something that stirred an emotion in me.  But it happens all the time!  So what if there is a little bit of noise or the images is not pin sharp?  Some of the greatest images ever made are not pin sharp!  If you don't believe me, go look at some of the original prints from Cartier-Bresson and others.

I think one of the reasons the reviewers, YouTube gurus, critics, mavens and others who pontificate about the smallest technical aspects of imaging is because cameras, lenses and the imaging chain is so good today that there is no longer really anything worthwhile to complain about and they “have” to come up with “something,” “anything” to justify their podcast, blog, channel, etc. These presenters are being critical of things that were never even thought of 20 years ago.

I think the time for nitpicking, niggling, pixel peeping and looking for something to criticize and pick apart images is a disservice to all of us photographers.  It shifts the conversation away from what it should be—meaningful imaging and the "art of photography."  How about we just appreciate the finest photographic tools the world has ever known, use them to create art, record emotion evoking images and then look at the results of our efforts with pride and satisfaction instead of self-defeating behaviors that can zap the joy out of our photographic efforts.

Just my $0.02 worth.

Join me over at Instagram @dennisamook or my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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