TOOLS OF THE CARFT

Last week, David DuChemin wrote several blog posts about the art of photography, as is his habit, and he mentioned a "...tool of the craft..." that I hadn't considered before. I previously regarded shutter speed, aperture, focal length, film or sensor format (crop), distance to subject, etc., as tools at my disposal for making pictures and telling stories. I can manipulate any one of these items to achieve a different end result or convey a different message. The one that I think we should add to that list, and possibly think about far more often is focus.

FOCUS

Having had a few days to think about it, focus is a huge part of storytelling. Shifting focus in a scene from foreground to background, blurred action with a key focal point, all techniques key to storytelling. As I sat and thought through this, the first scene that popped into my head was the final scene of Inception. A key scene with complimentary background action but a main focus on the spinning dradle.

Here are a few examples from my online portfolios that utilize selective focus (or selective bokeh) to help tell more of a story.