Get An If

Ifs are awesome. You can do anything with an if. You can persuade people to buy cameras, give you their lunch, stay away from your borders, or clean the inside of the car.

You can also use them to prevent other people from eating their lunch, to gain commercial advantage, and to hide the fact that you don't have enough money.

On the technical side, ifs allow the macro photographer to link together aperture, focal length, and distance to the subject to arrive at not enough depth of field. And the wonderful thing is that it really doesn't matter what values you set for any of the criteria, you still arrive at not enough depth of field. It is like doing roundabouts in Manchester - no matter where you go, they always go the same place.

Ifs are also useful in the artistic side of photography. If you make it dark and moody you can win club competitions and if you make it bright and over-saturated you can sell it to the junk mail catalogue printers and if you cannot focus you can bokeh.

Commercially, if you set your photography prices high they will come, but grumble about paying, and if you set them higher they will come in smaller numbers and grumble louder - but if you set your prices at the absolutely astronomical unbelievable level they will come and tell you how great your product is. They won't pay, but you'll feel good.

You see it all depends on where you put your ifs. Start your speech with the if and people will not hear it - they will only hear what they want to, but they will be pleased to think of it. If you drop the if in the middle of the business you disappoint their hopes and they resent it. The concept that you are trying to get to them may be exactly the same but their perception of it is different.

And you can always resort to sad puppy eyes and the phrase "If Only..."