***If you are looking at this on your phone you probably won’t see the blur in these photos. Your phone will crush the images to the point where they will probably look in focus. Of all the posts so far, this one needs to be seen on a bigger screen to make sense…
***photographers: this article is not about using diffusion filters to soften focus.
Finding something interesting in “mistakes”
Over the years, I have taken thousands of pictures. Sometimes they turn out great. Often times they don’t. Sometimes the image I was seeing in my mind didn’t translate well with the camera or, other times, the photos are technically flawed. My camera is older and the auto-focus system is not perfect. It struggles with difficult light and reflections, especially at night. So, I tend to get a few photos that are out of focus from time to time. These blurry pictures are impossible to fix and I always delete them first, without any thought, to save space on my computer.
Lately, I have found a few of these pictures that escaped getting deleted. While they are not what I intended, some of them are still kind of interesting. Unfortunately, only a few of these “mistakes” have survived. So, I decided to go out and try to take some out of focus pictures on purpose and see if I could come up with some good shots.
This project turned out to be much more difficult than I thought. My idea was to just go out, find an interesting scene, manually de-focus the camera and shoot away. I shot hundreds of photos and the majority looked terrible…not interesting…just BAD pictures.
But, over a couple of weeks, I managed to figure out which images are more likely to make a good blurred photo. Here are the ones that I think turned out pretty well.
Shooting through moving water
This was a deletion-survivor from a recent trip to Korea. It is a picture of a shark in a big tank at the COEX aquarium in Seoul. I took the photo from above through the rippling surface of the water, so all the light is bent into these unnatural shapes. While it isn’t the best picture of a shark, I like the way all the colours are swirled together to make this abstract image.I tried to recreate this phenomenon in my kitchen sink with these coffee cups. I like the way the water distorted them and I may try some more like this in the future. Maybe not as interesting as the first picture but…they are just coffee cups not sharks : )
Manually de-focussed still life shots around my apartment
These photos have a dreamy quality about them: you know what they are but all the details are missing. Like…you know there was a person in your dream…you know what you said, you know what you did…but you can’t see their face no matter how hard you try to remember….these pictures have that kind of feeling for me.
A paperback book: what’s inside is obscured. You can almost make out a word or two but not quite. Water glass in morning sunlight…the light is strong and direct and the glass is a cold hard object. But…the slight blur softens and warms the whole image.Sunlight filtered through fern leaves: if I stare at this long enough I feel relaxed…there is a calmness in this photo that wouldn’t be there if it was razor sharp.White porcelain vase: The plant is mostly in focus but, because it is off to the side and dark, the white porcelain jar becomes the main subject. All the hard reflections in it are smeared together giving it a liquid softness. Having a small portion of a picture in focus turned out to be a good technique for keeping the image interesting.
Out in the city at night
I thought night shooting might be a little easier but it was just as difficult to get an interesting shot. Here are a few that I did like. In the city at night, there is a lot of hard contrast in the lighting which I found helps to give some structure to de-focussed pictures.
I really like this one. It is a survivor from our green-photo project. We were taking photos around Philosophers Walk near the ROM and a mother fox with 4 pups came out to dig for food around the trees. I didn’t have the camera set up for this kind of subject but this is what I got anyways. This one looks otherworldly to me. Because of the green light and the motion blur. This could be another planet.Colourful business signs lit up at night make good photos anytime. After many bad shots, I learned that for a de-focussed photo, it helps to be able to read the words. This is a pretty severely de-focussed shot of the city skyline. It works because the subject is obvious and the contrast between light and dark is strong. I like how all the points of light become circular here.Food trucks on the university campus. Great light, colours and graphics add to the interest of the blurry image. I don’t know why but it makes me think of those iridescent puffy stickers…These two photo-bombed me. I am including it just because they are cute (and blurry)There is some motion blur here and the cyclist is also strongly backlit. It gives the picture kind of a ghostly appearance.This is just a good image. The blur adds a little to the strangeness of this student studying by streetlight under a tree in the middle of the night. This is not really even near a building…she is in a field.
Time Travel
This one has a nice warm light. The manicured garden and the building itself give it a vintage vibe. It looks to me like the 1950s. Like, if you backed up the camera a little, you would see big american cars with fins and lots of chrome parked outside. Dreamy.
Photos that look like paintings
Scenes with strong texture and clear structure can make good unfocussed images. Because of the large grain and the soft transition between colours, these ones look like oil paintings to me.
This is a tiny house in Cabbagetown with a white picket fence and a river-stone facade. This image has great texture and no clutter. Nothing extra: house, tree, fence. With the slight blur and bright sunshine it looks more painted than photographed. Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto. The massive pillars of the building along with its imposing size and the night lighting make it look painted here.Old couple and fisherman at Brickworks pond. This image has strong lines that help it stay together even blurred as it is. This could easily pass for a painting.
Ghosts…
Images with people in them turned out to be some of the most interesting ones. They all look like dream scenes to me. They are clearly people but their limbs are distorted and their faces are obscured. This is how I tend to remember characters from dreams. I don’t think I have ever seen a ghost but, if I did, I imagine that this is what they would look like.
After dark at King’s College Circle. Night time ghosts.Sherbourne Subway Station at Glen Road. Daytime ghosts.Beltline Trail ghostsGhost couple leaving the forest
What’s next…?
This was a difficult project and I am kind of glad that I can get back to taking “normal” pictures again. I am really happy with these few good shots that I did come up with. I hope you like them too. Working on a project about shadows…
As always, you are welcome to leave questions or comments below. I am always happy to hear from you. Knowing you have been here motivates me to keep at it. Thanks for looking!
