I use a similar photograph to the one above to stress to my students how important focus is in a photograph. I was looking through some photographs from years past the other day, and I ran across the set of images this one originates from, and I couldn’t help remembering how a three-day run at photographing jackrabbits and ground squirrels solidified this concept in my head. Why show these critters in a post about focus? If you’ve ever tried to maintain crystal clear clarity while photographing animals that have lightning fast reflexes (with focal lengths between 200mm and 400mm), then you know what I mean.
I learned how to really hunker down on photography from arguably one of the best wildlife photographers in the nation, Wyman Meinzer. Early in his career, Wyman was known as a maverick of sorts when he would submit tack-sharp images of running whitetail deer he had taken while manually focusing an FD 500mm f/4.5 flourite lens mounted on a Canon F1N. The likes of Field & Stream and American Sportsman were stunned by the clarity of the images (usually taken on Kodachrome or Fujichrome Velvia, 100 ISO or lower), and it was his tenacity for sharp, eye-drawing imagery that I picked up when shooting with him.
Focus really does matter. In all actuality, why wouldn’t it? If you want a tip from this: THINK ABOUT YOUR FOCUS! This isn’t saying that every shot NEEDS to be in focus (my style generally lends itself to something in the image being in focus), but this is a call to working on that part of the craft that is psychologically so important for the creator (the photographer) and the viewer. I really can’t stress this enough to my students that accepting an out-of-focus shot (when it certainly needs to be in focus) is not acceptable. Even those shots that are barely out of focus. No amount of “sharpening” in Photoshop actually saves a blurry image. Obviously, sometimes things happen. Sometimes, the shutter speed is too slow, and maybe a happy accident, or non-accident, occurs, and you are provided with a unique vantage of the subject. This does happen. I also can’t say that every shot any working photographer (myself included) takes is in focus. The photographer that tells you so is not being honest. However, the more you work at this technical aspect of photography, the better understanding you have for how to treat it in a way that compliments your technique and style!
Methodical use of focus is a great way to direct how an image, your art, your creation, is supposed to be viewed. We have all these wonderful tools of aesthetics to help us maintain as much control of an image as possible. Just as a photographer would use depth of field and composition, light and form, so he/she can use focus to direct where a viewer’s eyes go first. It’s no secret in the photography community that a viewing eye will quickly drift to where an image is sharp. This is why portraits and photographs of wild and domesticated animals maintain sharpness in the subjects’ eyes. You’ve probably been asked before by your subject (unless they are indeed animals) about why you are moving the camera up and down before snapping the shot. If you’re like me, you’re using auto-focus to make sure the eyes are sharp before re-composing the shot.
Focus, as you can see, is such a powerful tool. Combined with shutter speed and aperture (depth of field), you have three of the greatest technical aspects of photography at your fingertips, able to wield them in order to manipulate three of the greatest aesthetic features of any image. Useful? I would think so! Something to always work on? Definitely! Again, I’m a fan of shots that are in focus. Blame it on my training, my background, the part of the industry that I’m in. I just feel that sharp images convey more of the story that I’m trying to tell. Even shots that show extreme motion, such as David duChemin’s well-known gondola shots, although seemingly out of focus, were shots rendered due to movement and time. I guarantee you that before the time-created blurs and streaks were even a component of the image itself, the photographer placed his plane of focus in the proper place.
I hope I didn’t come across as polemically against out-of-focus images. I’m not that at all, and if I was, I would be shooting down some of the greatest photojournalistic works we have ever seen in photographic history. What I am saying is that it pays to focus (pun intended) on creating sharp images when needed. We haven’t begun to talk about exhibiting images in certain parts of the industry in relationship to their sharpness, but we’ll end here.
I’d love to hear your comments about your perspective on out-of-focus images. It’s an ever-changing visual world, and with it, opinions and attitudes about these types of things change as well. It’s an important concept to discuss, because at some point, focus becomes less about technical aptitude, and more about personal and professional vision and creativity. It’s necessary to get to the second part!
More to come…
I'm an editorial and natural history photographer based out of Lubbock, Texas, as well as a photography instructor at Texas Tech University. My work primarily focuses on features and environmental portraits for magazines, books, and commercial purposes, and I'm available for both domestic and international travel.
I'm a regular contributor to the Manfrotto School of Xcellence, an educational resource for amateurs and professionals alike. I'm also a partner and editor for Badlands Design and Production, a publishing house that focuses on high-end coffee table photography books.
Was thinking about this during a quick portrait shoot today when, you guessed it, I didn’t have my tripod.
The problem with teaching focus to beginning photographers is that the rules governing focus are more subject to what you’re trying to communicate as an artist than a law written down somewhere – like most “rules” of photography, focus is a rule which those who have not learned to follow should not attempt to break.
The more Rebels with kit lenses I see hanging around the necks of “wedding and family photographers” shooting their hapless subjects against brick walls, the more convinced I am that good communicators have the potential to be good photographers, while poor communicators will find themselves writing lengthy “artist statements” to compensate for their lack of expertise.
RE Charlie: I agree with needing to learn the so-called “rules” of focus, and learning how using it (or not) works toward visually communicating what you want to try getting across with a photograph or video clip. However, it’s also fair to note that everyone must start somewhere (we all had our own “Rebel” at some point), and this whole thing is a continual learning process. On top of that, people learn at different paces, and what’s maybe more relative to this conversation, some may learn that this is not a path they want to go down professionally. Teaching and learning creativity is extremely hard, and it takes a lot of devotion to see if what you do creatively is unique enough for “success,” whatever the metric for success may be per individual. To me, time tells. Not just linear time, but the actual time spent working at this craft…that and about 1,000,000 other factors that have to come together to make a good visual (and non-visual) communicator.