Why quality does not matter.

A few years ago, I just started taking pictures in a more serious way, I had a chat with an old photographer. I met him at Zurich mainstation. A chat between two guys with a camera around their neck.

He was a news reporter and took pictures for newspapers for like 50 years. Now as he is retired he likes to take pictures of airplanes with his Lumix and is still excited about the possibility to go into a photo store and print his fresh images on photo paper. Straight from the chip! Crazy new technique! Sometimes he takes candids of pretty girls, too, he told me with a smile. He was really the character. He allowed me to take a portrait of him as a souvenir.

Looking at my camera and asking me what my subject is I explained that I wanted to take architecture shots of a stairway on that afternoon. But that I failed because it was too dark in there. 

"You can't push the ASA higher on that Canon? Bloody japanese machines! Highly overrated! I always said that! And they are far too expensive! Plastic stuff!"

"Oh, of course I can. But increasing the ISO causes noises and the picture quality decreases equally."

"And?"

"Well, it's not good to have a noisy picture. That's proof of bad quality and a bad job."

He sighed and told me something I still remember and probably never will forget: 

"Let me tell you one thing, young man. Quality is not important. It is not important if your picture is perfect sharp. Or perfect lighted. Or if it has noise or other flaws. That's all not important. Important is only one thing: To HAVE a picture at the end of the day. It is always better to have a picture, even if it has its flaws, than not having one. If you don't shoot because you think the quality will not be sufficient, you probably will miss some of the best pictures that will ever appear in front of you. Don't care about quality. Just shoot!"

I was thinking about his words yesterday as I set the ISO to 1600 and dialed the shutter down to 1/4 before I took this picture. He was right. It's always better to have such a picture, than not.