JoeV
Thin Air, Bright Sun
Hi all. I'm posing a question that's more photo-history related, but also based on a personal observation, however flawed that may be.
I've taken a recent interest in so-called 'shallow focus' images, taken by operating the camera's aperture wide, or nearly wide, open. This is certainly nothing new in photography as a general field, but in my personal style of shooting it is rather new.
Travel backward in time to the early 1980's, when I, and others I knew, were operating with manual-focus 35mm SLR's, typically in aperture-priority mode with the lens usually set to f/11 or f/16, hyperfocal focussed to achieve as wide of a range of focus in the scene as possible. My personal observation is that this seemed like the modus operandi of the era, at least in the circles I ran around in. Selective focus was a known effect, but considered by many I knew at the time to be just that: an effect that was best used sparingly, at the risk of overdoing it.
Fast forward to today, where esoteric discussions of the bokeh qualities of specific lenses have spilled over onto multiple photo discussion forums, and wonderful images are commonly posted that exhibit the peculiar artistic qualities of selective focus.
I am curious if this observation is at all related to any historic trend in photography as a general field. When I mentally recall images taken in the early to mid 20th century, from pictorialism to Steiglitz to the 'Group f/64' school of photography, I don't recall seeing a common practice of selective focus imagery. Pictorialism, for instance, seems to me to more resemble pinhole photography than selective focus, since the entire image field is often unselectively soft, offering little distance-related clues. And the so-called 'west coast' style of Adams, Weston & others seems, to my memory, to be almost exclusively preoccupied with maximum depth of focus and image sharpness.
If the above observation is assumed to have some merit, when did the change happen? I see commonly now examples of selective focus in, for instance, photo-journalism, where I don't recall it being that common in the Life Magazine era of the '50s and '60s.
So, if there is a recent historical selective focus genre in photography, is it too much to ask: why? What brought about the change? In my thinking on the subject, I see it as photography itself (not photographers, mind you) becoming 'self-aware'; that is, selective focus brings to the fore the optical qualities of the 'Artificial Eye', the lens; rather than the eye/brain neural quality that seems to see the world with equivalent focus at all distances (artificially constructed from the memory of multiple angles of view, neurologists might inform us).
Are we finally learning to see the world as the camera sees it, rather than as humans see it?
I'd like to hear your thoughts.
~Joe
I've taken a recent interest in so-called 'shallow focus' images, taken by operating the camera's aperture wide, or nearly wide, open. This is certainly nothing new in photography as a general field, but in my personal style of shooting it is rather new.
Travel backward in time to the early 1980's, when I, and others I knew, were operating with manual-focus 35mm SLR's, typically in aperture-priority mode with the lens usually set to f/11 or f/16, hyperfocal focussed to achieve as wide of a range of focus in the scene as possible. My personal observation is that this seemed like the modus operandi of the era, at least in the circles I ran around in. Selective focus was a known effect, but considered by many I knew at the time to be just that: an effect that was best used sparingly, at the risk of overdoing it.
Fast forward to today, where esoteric discussions of the bokeh qualities of specific lenses have spilled over onto multiple photo discussion forums, and wonderful images are commonly posted that exhibit the peculiar artistic qualities of selective focus.
I am curious if this observation is at all related to any historic trend in photography as a general field. When I mentally recall images taken in the early to mid 20th century, from pictorialism to Steiglitz to the 'Group f/64' school of photography, I don't recall seeing a common practice of selective focus imagery. Pictorialism, for instance, seems to me to more resemble pinhole photography than selective focus, since the entire image field is often unselectively soft, offering little distance-related clues. And the so-called 'west coast' style of Adams, Weston & others seems, to my memory, to be almost exclusively preoccupied with maximum depth of focus and image sharpness.
If the above observation is assumed to have some merit, when did the change happen? I see commonly now examples of selective focus in, for instance, photo-journalism, where I don't recall it being that common in the Life Magazine era of the '50s and '60s.
So, if there is a recent historical selective focus genre in photography, is it too much to ask: why? What brought about the change? In my thinking on the subject, I see it as photography itself (not photographers, mind you) becoming 'self-aware'; that is, selective focus brings to the fore the optical qualities of the 'Artificial Eye', the lens; rather than the eye/brain neural quality that seems to see the world with equivalent focus at all distances (artificially constructed from the memory of multiple angles of view, neurologists might inform us).
Are we finally learning to see the world as the camera sees it, rather than as humans see it?
I'd like to hear your thoughts.
~Joe
