Shallow Depth of Field in Landscapes

daveleo said:
Well .... after reading on here, I see that mine was kind of a weak reply. I was imagining an image of a {flower, statue, cow, car?} in perfect focus, surrounded by "bokeh" that shows form but very little detail. Some of the landscape examples posted above show me that I was not thinking broadly enough.
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f16sunshine said:
One more :)

Here I like the glow to go along with softness and shallow DOF.
Meyer Trioplan 100mm f2.8 wide open, infinity focus.

HP5@1600 rodinal100 006 by Adnan W, on Flickr
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While I like f16sunshine's photo, I think this falls in line with what daveleo was expecting.

I don't ordinarily think of this kind of photo as landscape, although I'm sure others might. To me, the subject is too specifically the statue setting here, and to my thought it doesn't reach beyond that. I generally think of landscape as drawing me out, pulling me into the scene and tugging at things beyond it.

G
 
daveleo said:
To me, as a viewer, a shallow DOF image is categorically NOT a "landscape" picture. It's a picture of an isolated subject, while the out of focus areas are simply framing and offering a background for the subject...
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Yes, an artistic tool to place emphasis on a portion of the image and send the rest into obscurity.

If that's what your landscape or outdoor photo needs, then use it.

But over use of 'bokeh' can become a gimmick and as uninteresting as 'hdr'.

Most art benefits from discretion and moderation.
 
I am with daveleo on this topic.

A focused subject in the foreground or middle with the rest thrown OOF is not landscape in my mind. This does not mean that those photos do not work, they absolutely do as some fine examples in this thread, I just can't call them landscapes.
 
I always thought of landscape to be exactly that - capturing a selected area of geography. Not really sure its anything to do with depth - I think that is just barrier put in place by an element of single mindedness. Its not a criticism (my apologies if it sounds like one), but to some degree, we all know what we like and that is usually influenced by something, somewhere.
 
I believe many of the people praising front to back sharpness will in fact gladly use fog, rain, shadows, long exposures on moving water etc. to partially obscure or soften the detail in their landscapes. Why not use limited DOF, then? Especially with larger formats that allow very subtle gradations (and keeping everything in sharp focus can be problematic anyway).

I like Roland's black&white example. Not overdone and wouldn't work without the blur, IMO.

OTOH, there are people who insist on going to the beach with a ND-filtered Noctilux and shoot everything at f/1 just because – well, the merit of their work rarely rises above that of their peers who mainly shoot brick walls, license plates and newspaper spreads at f/11.
 
To be serious, take landscape painting as a comparator. In European painting, it does not go back very far but still a century plus before Niepce et al, but on its timeline up to the present you can find paragons throughout the DOF spectrum, from deep/sharp to shallow/blurred to abstract/not applicable. Whether a Lorrain is superior to a Cezanne is not a rational question except to certain critics now long dead. One may prefer Vermeer's Delft to any of Turner's land or seascapes, but I imagine both artists pursued what they liked or what they could not help pursuing to the end of vision and technique.

Why should a photographer be any different, or rather, more limited by prescriptive constraints? Smoke and mirrors can be as delightful as plein air. Sometimes I take off my (nearsighted) glasses to enjoy terra sfumato. Sometimes I do the same with focus and aperture on my mechanical eye.
 
My understanding of "bokeh" is "the quality of the out of focus image".

At which point, yes, of course bokeh is relevant. But equally, some out of focus backgrounds (wide apertures) are simply nauseating:they are no more than "because I can" pictures.

It's a bit like humour. If you're good enough, you can make a joke [picture] out of anything: cf. Charlie Hebdo on a good day. If you're not good enough, you can't: cf. Charlie Hebdo on a bad day.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
My understanding of "bokeh" is "the quality of the out of focus image".

At which point, yes, of course bokeh is relevant. But equally, some out of focus backgrounds (wide apertures) are simply nauseating:they are no more than "because I can" pictures.

It's a bit like humour. If you're good enough, you can make a joke [picture] out of anything: cf. Charlie Hebdo on a good day. If you're not good enough, you can't: cf. Charlie Hebdo on a bad day.

Cheers,

R.
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then I just meant 'shallow depth of field' ... the aesthetics, or lack thereof, of the blurry bits in good light

PS ... Je suis oeil privat
 
I think it is just another visual tool to be used to help convey the intent. The problem is to many photographers just use these kinds of things because they think shallow DoF looks cool without any regard to what they are trying to say visually. If a shallow DoF is helping support the visual statement then it is needed. If not then why?
 
Yes, for the right shot. Too much DoF can make a scene look pretty flat. Shallow DoF can give the illusion of 3D where the scene would benefit.
 
daveleo said:
To me, as a viewer, a shallow DOF image is categorically NOT a "landscape" picture. It's a picture of an isolated subject, while the out of focus areas are simply framing and offering a background for the subject.
Landscape images are categorically huge DOF, so my eye can wander around the entire (in-focus) frame, just as it would had I been at the scene.
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Very good, I agree. IMO the shallow DOF has been done to death. It's becoming the new HDR.
 
I think it can have its place but it's not a concept/construct I use very often...

tumblr_n26mej87nq1qg7g9so1_1280.jpg
 
here's one that I took recently, I wanted the tree to be in focus but everything blurred so I shot this wide open f/5.6 with a 210mm lens on my 4x5

45cf461 by earl.dieta, on Flickr
 
Given all of the contortions I put my view cameras through to get tack sharp landscape images, that mode of thought tends to trickle down to my other formats as well. However, I do occasionally find a composition that lends itself to shallow DOF.

3612523611_71d08780ff_b.jpg


I always liked the 3D rendering of this image - especially when viewing it in print form.
 
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