Broken Heart [Defocusing]

[sarahashleyphotos]

What do you think of purposely defocusing the subject of an image? I think it works in some images like the one I just shot. a lot of people just dont get it though. =/

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2422/3682645573_c23080f598_o.jpg

Because sometimes things just dont look good in focus.
Normally I use a pinhole for this kind of thing but this is my first time defocusing with a real lens. It just wasent working when I had it in focus.

Set up: This is a paper heart with broken glass on it. It is laying on a mirror and lights and the backdrop are being reflected.

[sarahashleyphotos]

<3 =)

[sarahashleyphotos]

anyone???

[710 Studio]

I think it works in some ways, but falls short in others. What I mean is, the purposeful defocusing of everything leaves a certain mystery within the photo. I like that about it. However, my eyes are not drawn to any one thing, in particular, so I find my eyes doing a lot of wandering about, not really landing on a solid subject.

Keep experimenting with this [not necessarily the same subject, just the idea behind it]. I'd like to see what you come up with!

[Christopher Steven b]

What do I think of purposely defocusing? I see it as an artistic choice like choosing dull pencils over sharp ones. The main difference is that in photography there are obviously certain standard forms that we [photographers + even just casual observers], quite understandably, come to expect to see. We usually expect to see a main subject; we usually expect to be able to disambiguate everything in the image; and we usually expect for something in the image--usually the main subject--to be sharply focused. How less rich of a world it would be if every photo satisfied all of these rules.

I want to say: experiment, and then think about what effect your experimentation has on the viewer [e.g., what does the softness convey here that the sharpness doesn't?]; and then I wish to correct myself and to encourage a more intuitive approach. As regards most things of import: i don't know!

[Christopher Steven b]

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2510/3685775487_396e81fc43_o.jpg

Click on the above link for an e.g. from just the other evening when I made a similar decision regarding [manually] defocusing. Here it was forced by circumstances a little [night time shooting with long exposure, hand held]; but pushing what seemed central out of focus also made sense to me intuitively--it conveyed what I was experiencing far better than a well focused image could.