A recent messenger chat with a friend of mine who is a wedding videographer, revealed two things. One is that my TV is really outdated and two… that I’m not quite ready for 8k photography and video.

I kind of knew my TV wasn’t up to speed with the latest pixel rates but I still thought of it as a decent HD telly! I don’t really watch that much and I don’t even have an aerial connected so 8k streaming is not coming anywhere near my house any time soon.

So yes, technically I’m not quite ready for 8k but there are other aspects to!

I was recently sent a scan of an old school time photo from the nineties. It was an old schoolmate which sent it to me and the photo showed my younger self surrounded with a bunch of friends. It’s not been this long since that photo was taken (or I’d like to think so) and I found it difficult to recognise everyone.

The scan was quite clear however the photo being a typical product of a point and shoot camera from the nineties wasn’t up to scratch which in my opinion only made it better! Not quite sharp and full of typical film grain photograph made me stare at it for a little while trying to remember that moment when it was taken and to recognise everyone else on the photo.

What is the point of all this you’re asking?

I thought that in today’s world we don’t really spend this much time looking at photos. Today if an image is not clear or we don’t like our pose we’d delete it and move onto the next one and then the next and so on until we find what we like. Then we find ourselves overwhelmed with the number of photos which in fact show pretty much the same scene over and over. This is all before we even get to the stage of choosing the right present in Lightroom!

The beautiful mist or not-perfection and kind of mystery surrounding most of all my nineties photographs of myself originates from not being able to see the clear picture, literally!

When I think of 8k photo and video, I sort of imagine a short, slow motion highlight clip from a Champions League game where Robert Lewandowski scores a beautiful penalty. I imagine the TV camera showing slow motion shots of the pieces of grass being lifted off the ground as the striker’s boot hits the football and the green debris flood my… HD screen!

When I think of different types of photography, be it weddings or portraiture, I don’t mind imperfection. Unless we are doing a commercial assignment or a packshot that needs to show all the details, I ‘m not sure if we need to be as perfect as the Bayern Munich’s striker. 

8k in wedding photography and videography

As a wedding photographer (which is something I do) moments matter to me so do emotions. I don’t mind delivering a blurry out of focus photo of a couple when it shows them having a great time or having a moment of reflection. Maybe 8k can help shooting better wedding videos but I don’t really mind less pixels in photography.

This above everything else overwrites the pixels. It will (I’d like to think) make the couple stop by that photo for longer when they take it out of the album some 30 years later as they will need to have a closer look!