Welcome to our P52! This project is designed to get you out with your camera once a week in a meaningful way. Each week I will post a prompt for you to consider. The prompts are merely suggestions, and you are free to shoot off topic if you wish. All images posted must be taken by you, be safe for work, and be taken with this project in mind. Please do not post archive photos. For a further discussion of the guidelines, please refer to this thread, and you can find the previous weeks linked there if you missed them. Feel free to join in at any time of the year, and you may go back to missed weeks if you still wish to participate.
Week 45: Out of Focus/Abstract
We are coming into the home stretch here, friends. I can’t believe we are nearing the midpoint to November (perhaps not today but by the end of the week we will be mid-month) and I am really impressed with those of you who have stuck with this all year. It’s an impressive feat.
This week we will be thinking outside the box. I have two variations on a theme, depending on what gear you use or how your brain works. They are very similar, although you’ll end up with different results. I want you to think about images in terms of light/shadow, color, contrast, and then make a photo that is out of focus. Not a single point of focus. You will be considering so many of our previous lessons on creating strong images through the use of lines, framing, negative space, and other compositional techniques, all to figure out how to convey a message without having a clear focal point.
This is not a technique I use frequently, but I’d say on average, I try this at least once a month. There is something about the way the light catches my eye sometimes that throws everything out of focus in real life - my eyes are tired or my brain is tired and something catches my peripheral vision and I just see the dancing light, so I go find a camera and defocus an image. For me there is a sense of peace and nostalgia, just seeing light and colors melding together.
Some of you may not like this technique and wish for something a bit more concrete to work with, or you may have gear limitations that don’t allow you to defocus as easily as a manual lens. For those of you who fall into this category, I’d encourage you to look for a more abstract scene, even if you do have a true focal point. The same guidelines as above will shape your image, but you might choose to have something in focus. The Tate Modern Museum defines abstract as:
And while this definition encompasses modern art in terms of paintings, it’s definitely applicable to photography as well. While my method of defocusing certainly hits that mark, you might find a place where you see a bunch of lines converging in an interesting way, or you might even just find an ordinary object that you can showcase with unique lighting or a heavy crop that makes it appear different than it would ordinarily, and you can turn that scene into something abstract.
You can also play with some filters in Photoshop or your editing program of choice to help a focused image become more abstract, although I don’t personally have any examples of those. Other options are some ICM or even a slow shutter speed (both discussed more thoroughly in the Long Exposure week) to show a sense of motion and imperfection in your images.
If you have any vintage or specialty lenses like a Lensbaby, those are ideal for this week as they often have very distinct blur patterns.
The goal this week is to let go of perfection and show some movement and softness in your work and to really focus on creating an image with feeling and emotion rather than a realistic presentation of the scene at hand. It will take some undoing of your need for tack sharp images and lean into a more heartfelt image.
Week 45: Out of Focus/Abstract
We are coming into the home stretch here, friends. I can’t believe we are nearing the midpoint to November (perhaps not today but by the end of the week we will be mid-month) and I am really impressed with those of you who have stuck with this all year. It’s an impressive feat.
This week we will be thinking outside the box. I have two variations on a theme, depending on what gear you use or how your brain works. They are very similar, although you’ll end up with different results. I want you to think about images in terms of light/shadow, color, contrast, and then make a photo that is out of focus. Not a single point of focus. You will be considering so many of our previous lessons on creating strong images through the use of lines, framing, negative space, and other compositional techniques, all to figure out how to convey a message without having a clear focal point.
This is not a technique I use frequently, but I’d say on average, I try this at least once a month. There is something about the way the light catches my eye sometimes that throws everything out of focus in real life - my eyes are tired or my brain is tired and something catches my peripheral vision and I just see the dancing light, so I go find a camera and defocus an image. For me there is a sense of peace and nostalgia, just seeing light and colors melding together.
Some of you may not like this technique and wish for something a bit more concrete to work with, or you may have gear limitations that don’t allow you to defocus as easily as a manual lens. For those of you who fall into this category, I’d encourage you to look for a more abstract scene, even if you do have a true focal point. The same guidelines as above will shape your image, but you might choose to have something in focus. The Tate Modern Museum defines abstract as:
And while this definition encompasses modern art in terms of paintings, it’s definitely applicable to photography as well. While my method of defocusing certainly hits that mark, you might find a place where you see a bunch of lines converging in an interesting way, or you might even just find an ordinary object that you can showcase with unique lighting or a heavy crop that makes it appear different than it would ordinarily, and you can turn that scene into something abstract.
You can also play with some filters in Photoshop or your editing program of choice to help a focused image become more abstract, although I don’t personally have any examples of those. Other options are some ICM or even a slow shutter speed (both discussed more thoroughly in the Long Exposure week) to show a sense of motion and imperfection in your images.
If you have any vintage or specialty lenses like a Lensbaby, those are ideal for this week as they often have very distinct blur patterns.
The goal this week is to let go of perfection and show some movement and softness in your work and to really focus on creating an image with feeling and emotion rather than a realistic presentation of the scene at hand. It will take some undoing of your need for tack sharp images and lean into a more heartfelt image.
