Standards are an interesting thing. They are interesting mainly because of the lack of any sort of universal defiinition. If we are shooting editorial fashion, our standards are very different from someone else shooting catalog style fashion or P'boy style glamour. "Standards" are personal and depend on several things, where we are as photographers, what we intend to produce and our specific job at hand.
Back a century or so ago when I was learning to shoot, my "standards" were to get the shot in focus, to get the lighting right so that I did not age the model by 10 or 20 years and to come close to an attractive composition. Later as a working pro, my "standard" was to show the product I was being paid to shoot as well as possible, whether that product was a model, a portrait client, an article of clothing or some little gizmo, showing it as something some fool might actually want to buy. Standards are personal and one photographers standards are not anothers.
Never let someone else challenge your own standards, they are yours, not theirs!
__________________
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.
--HL Mencken
|