Sharp Photograph
What makes a sharp photograph sharp, and does it matter? When first taking photographs, your main concern may be exposure – is it properly lit. Once you learn to nail the lighting you want, then you may notice that the image you captured is unintentionally blurry…or just not “tack sharp”.
TACK Sharp photograph?
Scott Kelby, President and CEO of KelbyOne, wrote that “TACK stands for Technically Accurate Cibachrome Kelvin (which refers to the color temperature of light in photographs), and SHARP stands for Shutter Hyperfocal At Refracted Polarization”. A long, convoluted name (and, for some, a non-obvious joke!). Simply stated, a sharp photo is one where your subject is in perfect focus and every detail is clear and crisp.
For shooting photographs of birds in flight, a very high shutter speed (1/1000 or greater) may force you to use higher ISO – causing grain/noise to become an issue…and that may impact sharpness. We talked about ON1 NoNoise AI in a previous post, that will typically take care of the noise – and many times helps with the sharpness. Lightroom, Photoshop and other software has ways of helping as well. Google’s Pixel 6 phone camera has a Face Deblur option that will help make for sharper images.
With AI being able to make any image a sharp image everyone and anyone will be able to have tack sharp images basically straight out of camera. AI software has now given us sky swap ability, sharp images, best exposure, and many other ways of creating the perfect look to your image. What’s missing?
Composition, emotion, storytelling, feeling
Worry less about sharpness and more about The Why of your photography. What story are you trying to tell, or emotion are you trying to capture? Hit those targets and sharpness doesn’t matter. For proof look no further than Henri Cartier-Bresson who claimed “Sharpness is a bourgeois concept”.
Once again…who cares? Hopefully no one. Hopefully people have better things to care about than how sharp your images are. But, in case someone does care about such things they can rest assured in knowing our images are adjusted…and for sale.
