It's Perfect...

Aside from the fact that it is 15% over-saturated, 30% too dark, and has noise everywhere. The sun is in the wrong position and the flare from the lens is excruciating. There is no fibonacci curve or golden mean or rule of thirds anywhere in the frame and I suspect that even that is skewed - all the internal angles are greater than 90º. The paper is matte and the ink is gloss and several of the head jets are filled with dried insects. But it's perfect. Why? because it is a photo of something that is dearly cherished by someone else and you have presented them with an enlarged copy of it. The recipient of the gift sees through the thumb prints and coffee rings to the heart of the image, loves what you show - and takes no notice of how you show it. Contrast this idea with the famous set of platinum art prints made by Irving Penn in the 1950s of discarded cigarette butts picked up from New York gutters. Exquisite workmanship, fine art printing, careful technical brilliance. And a vile choice of subject. Art as hard as you can, sophisticate until your socks fall down - you are still looking at a tortured treatment of an unworthy subject. Irv was no always thus - some of his other work is sublime. Judge him on his fashion and portraits if you judge him at all. Don't glide upside down all the time and expect to get away with it. If your technique stinks, air it out occasionally. Remove the bugs from the sensor. Clean the lunch off the lens. Shoot at more than one aperture. Focus on something that seems to be important rather than something that just seems to be an ear. Likewise, look at your processing. Think of what you do with your computer and tablet ain the same terms you once thought of film that you put in for processing. If you got back horrible results you were not happy and you shared that unhappiness with the lab. In this case, if the results are terrible, start investigating where you go wrong. After all, it is you setting the camera and then whacking the sliders. There are practical trials you can do to help: a. Screw your courage up and format your card. If you are more courageous than most, format it without looking to see what's on there. Remember in space no-one can hear you scream when you remember the wedding shots... b. Now find the menu setting that resets your camera to factory defaults. Press it and hope that someone in Kyoto knows more than you do. c. Go take a picture of the front lawn and flower bed with the sun behind you and the camera set to auto or program. Include one of the children in the picture holding an X-Rite colour card. This is your basic shirley. It should look pretty good on the LCD screen at the back of the camera. Take it inside and plug it into your processing computer. d. If it looks like hell, zero all the sliders on your program and look again. Send the image to your printer and look at the results. e. Wherever the final result differs from what you want it to be, correct it. This may involve having your computer screen colour corrected - we sell things to do that. It may involve resetting the instructions to your printer from the computer - we can tell you how to arrange that. You may need a better printer - we can definitely provide those. You may even need to go see your optometrist as I did, and get your head examined. Mine turned out to be hollow. The thing you are aiming at is not to please your friend with the print of his airplane - nor to please a third party technical photo judge - it is to please yourself. Be prepared to make things simpler and easier for yourself whenever you can so that you can start to enjoy it.