Ninety Percent Sturgeon

Twenty years ago, when I was a fresh faced software engineer, Sturgeon’s Law was all the rage. This is probably because it enabled this short of exchange:

“Your software is crap!”

“Yeah? Well so is ninety percent of everything else!”

Fast forwards to today, and Sturgeon seems to have been forgotten by the younger generation, as represented by the grad who works in our office. He gave me a blank look when I mentioned Sturgeon and remained resolutely unimpressed when I filled him in on his "revelation".

Anyway, now I'm older and no wiser, I still find Sturgeon’s Law relevant and useful and not just for shutting up those ignorant individuals who have the temerity to criticise the standard of my professional output – should they be able to find any these days.

I find Sturgeon an inspirational and freeing alternative to the reductive mentality of the Jonathan Critchelys of this world. The implication of Sturgeon – that ten percent of stuff is actually valuable – is fine by me. I've done a fair amount of photography and generated numerous images this summer. But of these, there are three or four images that I'm really proud of and that I feel have moved my photography forwards. The rest are disposable, but it was necessary to make them – it would have been impossible to create the best without making the rest.

Having said that, I still regret posting those images of jasione, murky, horrible photos that they are – they were part of the ninety percent, no matter how you cut it.

The image above was made during a day out to Dunster Castle that we took some time in September. We got there on the West Somerset Railway's Dunster Express, which was fun. This flower - whatever it was - was growing on the South Terrace, where we stopped for lunch. I was without my macro lens at the time so this is another effort made with my Tamron super-zoom.