Thanks again everyone for your comments.
Ray- yes, I do find the out-of-focus images to be restful. For me, I can look at them and appreciate the colours and shapes of the image, rather than being distracted by the details.
One of my favourite quotes from the great Ansel Adams reads: "A great photograph is one that
fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed." (my emphasis) Ansel was of course known for taking only the sharpest possible images, rebelling against the prevailing trend when he was first starting of using slightly soft focus to add a "dreamy" effect, but what he said still rings true for me. When I make these blurry images, the thing that makes me take my camera out of the bag and compose a photo, and what I am trying to capture and present to the viewer, is the overall colours/shapes/patterns of the landscape,
not the specific details of the scene. As you noticed, there are times when it's the details that I find inspiring me to take a picture, and then I make sure that those details are captured sharply.
I am interested in knowing whether more "traditional" methods of rendering the entire contents of a photograph out-of-focus, such as long exposures of moving subjects, deliberate camera movement during exposure, or multiple exposures, are more appealing to people reading this thread, and if so,
why? Maybe some of you are familiar with the work of
Freeman Patterson? He is a well established canadian photographer, who has published several excellent books that encouraged me to experiment with different techniques of capturing the
essence of a subject, rather than the details. His term for this style is "photo impression". Here are a couple examples of his work (you can find more at his
website).
(camera movement, maybe even out-of-focus)
(depth of field, with no subject in focus (the light circles are dew drops))
(camera movement)
(camera movement)
Courtney Milne is another canadian photographer who's work inspired me to begin experimenting with my own work. He too, uses the techniques I mentioned above to render his photographs as abstractions of the actual subject. Here are a couple examples of his work, from a
great book that he did in tribute to canadian authour W.O. Mitchell
great book(long exposure with lens zoomed during exposure (reflections on a stream))
(double exposure with camera movement)
(camera movement)
Many more of my favourite examples of Courtney's work can be seen
here in a gallery of images in tribute to canadian artist Emily Carr, including these:
(camera movement)
(depth of field (??))
So do any of these images appeal to anyone? How do you react to these different techniques? What seperates the images/techniques that you do like versus the ones that you don't like?
I'm interested to hear anyone's thoughts on this...
Jonathan