I have focus issues.

First, I was too focused on other events this week to go out and shoot something new for this challenge.  I had focus, it just wasn’t on focusing with my camera.

Second, as a person who has worn glasses for most of her life, I have a very low tolerance for things that are out of focus.  I can tolerate and often use an unfocused background, I’ve come to accept that.  What I can’t tolerate is a foreground that’s out of focus.  It hurts my eyes.  I can’t help but keep trying to focus the image in my head.

So I spent a little time this evening looking through old images for any photos in which I purposely used a soft focus in the foreground.  I looked at thousands of pictures and came up with just a few, ones that I think work.   I can almost accept a soft focus in the foreground because the picture wouldn’t have worked without it.

The first is my favorite.  This is my son with his premature son, who had been taken out of his mother’s arms just minutes after birth to be transported to another hospital.  The soft focus in the foreground allows this picture to stay intimate.

The next two shots work for me because the soft focus in both the foreground and background isolates and pinpoints.  Had the entire image been in focus there would have been too much visual information.

I can’t take credit for this last shot but it’s a another favorite of mine and honestly one of the few shots where the out of focus foreground doesn’t hurt my eyes.  The person in focus is my husband and the photographer who took this shot very skillfully targeted him through the use of focus.  Never in a million years would I have taken this shot in this way, but it works.  It suppose it also helps that I love the subject!

So, although I didn’t actually shoot this week’s challenge, I did think about it while I was focused on other things and perhaps it will spur me on to experiment in the future.

Well, maybe not.  I think I’ll still have that issue with foreground focus.  I simply prefer my up close world to be clear.