Listen to the music in a car

Next time you feel like you’re at your wits’ end with an image, try looking at the photograph on different screens and in print…

- Paul Wilkinson

Being objective about your images isn’t easy – in truth, it may be unachievable. But that mustn’t stop you trying. The more objective you can be about your pictures the better your work will be, and turning pro only compounds that challenge: your clients will expect the best from you, and everything is to a deadline.

Years ago, I worked as a musician – I was a half-decent drummer – and so I occasionally found myself recording music in a studio. We would record a series of songs in a sweat-stained studio and then head to the mixing room to produce the finished audio. The mixing room is incredible – the clinical sound quality is fantastic; you can hear every note, breath, strum, crash, thump and pluck. Every detail is there in the mix.

The problem was that, after listening to the mix over and over and over, it became increasingly tricky to pick out what might need adjusting. It all becomes a bit of a blur – and it doesn’t help that there isn’t much that doesn’t sound good in a mixing room!

In an ideal world, we would be able to leave the mix-down for a couple of weeks and come back with fresh ears (and clean clothes), but usually, we had booked a limited number of hours, it was now 2am, and we were running out of budget!