Last Spring, after experimenting with photographing some wildflowers, I had written a post about purposefully throwing an image totally out of focus and making the photograph an abstract of form and color with no clearly defined shape. These are the images I had taken at the time.
Columbine
Copyright Howard Grill
Buttercups
Copyright Howard Grill
Recently, I was again experimenting with this idea, but was trying to work with it a bit differently. Rather than throwing the image totally out of focus, I threw it out enough to make it clear that the image was not simply poorly focused, but yet not far enough to totally loose the sense of underlying shape. I found the results to be compelling and very dreamlike in appearance, akin to the 'shoot through' technique where one places petals or other colored objects very close to the front of the lens while focusing on something a bit further out.
Floral Dream
Copyright Howard Grill
I am not quite sure if I am totally there yet, but find that I do like experimenting with this sort of image making and think it holds potential for conveying what I want to express while going 'beyond' the idea of selective focus and shallow depth of field. Does anyone else see anything interesting emerging from this, or am I just kidding myself here?
4 comments:
Howard,
Try taking two images. One being your out of focus image, the second (without moving the tripod) being as sharp as you can get it. Then combine them in Photoshop. Play with the opacity of the layers to see how much 'sharpness' you like combined with the 'dreaminess'.
I've tried this via multiple exposures in-camera and gotten some good results, but the Photoshop method lets everyone try it, even if their cameras don't support multiple exposures. The Photoshop method also allows for more control over how much of each version you want to show in the final image.
Great idea Bob...thanks for suggesting it...I will give that technique a try as well.
Theses are really cool Howard, I have shot a few of these but not on purpose :)
Thanks Bernie....a little something different to experiment with!
Post a Comment