Widgetising Photography

I’ve never thought about photography having a specification, but I suppose if you need some measure of completion or attainment then an initial specification must be required. How do you provide a specification before an original is created?

A client asked the question as part of an order process so I answered in the way I understand best, which is the way that it normally works. If you’re involved with buying products, I’m sure they all have specifications, it would be important to these to ensure that each prduct was the same as the previous but what about photography and when do you know that it’s reached specification?

I suppose photography is a customised product and the customer pays for that experience and creativity package where all circumstances are catered for, taken into consideration and the work produced. The end product is created where no two are ever the same which might just have been the easy answer?

Anyway, here’s what I thought the answer should be, which was maybe far from fitting any specification:

I suppose, if I supplied widgets I could easily provide a data sheet on those as they would all be the same, but normally I work in many varied environments which on the surface are pretty mundane and pretty unexciting places. I’m normally tasked by clients to make them look good when they don’t really know how to explain what they want and neither how they want it to look. By seeing the opportunities available and leaving out the mundane I envisage how the finished result could look and then make it happen… I could quite happily work for a month at an installation churning out eyecatching images of mundane processes where you would never ever imagine any excitement or interest could ever exist. Unfortunately, I have to do the best of all that in a day or two, so I try to pick the situations which will most utilize the time and maximize the benefit for the client. The results are those you see on the website.

I don’t know if that entirely fitted with the idea of a specification, but it was interesting to try, and perhaps similar to asking Leonardo da Vinci for a description on how might his portrait of the Mona Lisa might be specified before even the canvas was primed?

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