It’s the Image, Not the Effort

Over at The Online Photographer, Ctein has a minor treatise up on why it’s the final image that matters, not the effort you put into it.

This is something students grapple with quite a bit – they work really hard and then fall in love with the result because of the effort they put into it. But a viewer doesn’t know about the effort, they only know about the result. Accepting that it’s the result that matters more is a hard thing to grasp, especially when they’ve been told for years that effort will equal result.

It doesn’t.

Effort just means you worked, result means you worked well.