Girl riding bicycle. Barcelona October 2009
Many years ago I had a friend who owned his own clothing business. One of the things he made was hats with funny messages and designs. One day he showed me his latest creation: a hat that simply had 82% stitched on it. When I asked about the idea behind the design he told me that no one can get upset at 82%. He’s right. If you took a test and got 82% of the answers right you’d have done a great job. If the president had an 82% approval rating he’d be very happy. 82% is a nice solid number. It’s above average without being spectacular.
When you get to a certain level you are confronted quite often by 82% images. Photos that don’t suck, in fact they are better than average. But they are not quite exceptional. Like the one above. Personally I think it is an 82% image. I was walking home after a night out in Barcelona and this young lady wearing a headscarf passed me by on the bike. I had just enough time to snap two images. To me this photo just doesn’t quite capture whatever it was I was feeling or thinking at the moment. It’s okay but not great. So I have left it out of my online galleries. Perhaps I’m setting the bar too high but I don’t think so. What do you think?
