I have a great amount of passion for many things in my life; my wife, my children, cooking and of course my photography.
Ever since I first read Robert Pirsig's classic, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" I've been more than a little passionate on the subject of quality, if you've ever received, or seen, one of my finished albums you'll know what I'm talking about :)
In one passage in the book the author describes how loud music playing in a machine shop was more than likely the root cause of a mechanic's failure to find the problem with the engine.
Since reading that particular passage I've been a great proponent of silence in the workplace, especially when the tasks I'm performing do require considerable concentration. Yes, I do have a few CD's in the office for times when I'm filing, cleaning or carrying out other "non-thinking" duties. Last week I was enjoying, very much so, Krishna Das's version of Sita Ram as an e-mail request from a client arrived. Oh so so serendipitous I laughed as this client actually had some wonderful Kirtan music at her daughter's wedding which I photographed this past June, images below. Anyway,I worked on a couple of images she asked about and replied only to discover a few minutes later that, yes you guessed right, I had neglected to attach the files I had just worked on. That's the sort of error we leave ourselves open to when we fail to give our complete attention to the task(s) at hand. How many sample albums are out there in photographers' offices solely because someone messed up on the spelling of a name or the date of a wedding? More than a few I'll warrant. The discussion about multi-tasking I'll leave for another day :)
So for me it's back to the sounds of silence as I work on images and albums.
