Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Fern and spider Grass: Soft Focus in a B&W Image with A Principal Element blurred!
fern & spider grass
Jim and Jean,
I put the key discussion related to the fern together as it really shows how one has to view work that seems odd. Here's the clue. "Excellence" is defined in according to sets of standards each of us holds for a type of art. Where we have no preparation or experience, how do we judge.
The clue Jim gives of an acquired taste, such as when one learns about coffee, is easy to follow. Not only might pictures of coffee beans be more meaningful, but also the smell of great coffee can already lift one's mood. So there's an expectation of pleasure.
If we'd hear of a newly discovered Picasso, Miro or Rembrandt we'd all be full of anticipation.
With soft focus LF work, especially in B&W, it's harder to get into the rare world since we are flooded with images of the simplest common denominator: immediate ravishing impact:
Then show them a B&W picture and see the puzzlement. Color provides so much immediate response that we need, as it were, to change our position and reset the adjustments in our brains, like switching from tasting wines to watching dance or a mime.
The pictures where the main subject is a person, an old car or still life, shown in crisp focus, giving way to s a soft creamy bokeh effect, we can appreciate more easily. This, however, is much harder to approach. The softness is also on one of the principal elements.
Unless one stays with the picture and contemplates, the work may appear to be a mistake, included by error or just plain weird. In order to appreciate the picture, one has to "reset expectations of excellence", since if one os looking for technically uniform perfect focus, as in the colored examples above, then this will fail from the start. If one insists everything to be immediately clear, again this work cannot be excellent either. Instead, set the expectation rulers, with not limits, but questions such as these:
A visit to a museum will help. Looking other pictures in that style by the same photographer might help too as one gets the artist's pictorial language is spoken throughout all the pictures and, with the effort invested, one naturally might acquire the vocabulary.
Jean's discovery of that the proximal hovering element could be gently kissing it's love, is a revelation that helps us with out own ideas. So her effort, revealing a beautiful ethereal happening, pays off more handsomely than any of the pictures above, even, as they are, brimming full of color and immediate pizazz.
So, where can we go from here? What other examples do we have of a B&W image with a principal subject element being blurred this way? Can we add other examples?
Asher
fern & spider grass
Jim and Jean,
I put the key discussion related to the fern together as it really shows how one has to view work that seems odd. Here's the clue. "Excellence" is defined in according to sets of standards each of us holds for a type of art. Where we have no preparation or experience, how do we judge.
The clue Jim gives of an acquired taste, such as when one learns about coffee, is easy to follow. Not only might pictures of coffee beans be more meaningful, but also the smell of great coffee can already lift one's mood. So there's an expectation of pleasure.
If we'd hear of a newly discovered Picasso, Miro or Rembrandt we'd all be full of anticipation.
With soft focus LF work, especially in B&W, it's harder to get into the rare world since we are flooded with images of the simplest common denominator: immediate ravishing impact:
- Sunsets,
- Galloping zebra and wildebeest with clouds of dust
- Snow-capped mountains and green valleys with meandering streams,
- Baby gazelle with big eyes
- Child smashing a piñata
- Winner of a marathon breaking the tape.
- Mother nursing a child
Then show them a B&W picture and see the puzzlement. Color provides so much immediate response that we need, as it were, to change our position and reset the adjustments in our brains, like switching from tasting wines to watching dance or a mime.
The pictures where the main subject is a person, an old car or still life, shown in crisp focus, giving way to s a soft creamy bokeh effect, we can appreciate more easily. This, however, is much harder to approach. The softness is also on one of the principal elements.
Unless one stays with the picture and contemplates, the work may appear to be a mistake, included by error or just plain weird. In order to appreciate the picture, one has to "reset expectations of excellence", since if one os looking for technically uniform perfect focus, as in the colored examples above, then this will fail from the start. If one insists everything to be immediately clear, again this work cannot be excellent either. Instead, set the expectation rulers, with not limits, but questions such as these:
- What are the frames of reference that the artist might be using?
- Can I relax criteria to get the feel of this new type of experience?
- What might be happening here?
A visit to a museum will help. Looking other pictures in that style by the same photographer might help too as one gets the artist's pictorial language is spoken throughout all the pictures and, with the effort invested, one naturally might acquire the vocabulary.
Jean's discovery of that the proximal hovering element could be gently kissing it's love, is a revelation that helps us with out own ideas. So her effort, revealing a beautiful ethereal happening, pays off more handsomely than any of the pictures above, even, as they are, brimming full of color and immediate pizazz.
So, where can we go from here? What other examples do we have of a B&W image with a principal subject element being blurred this way? Can we add other examples?
Asher
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