Focus
Focus is a key element of photography, especially as it is one of the formal elements. Many people would just assume that focus is obviously needed in any photography, however some photographers may decide to have only a specific section of the photo in focus- or even none at all. This would be a shallow depth of field as only some of the photo is in focus. A large depth of field would enable the photographer to capture the entire photo in focus due to the amount of light the camera is letting in.
Ralph Eugene Meatyard
Ralph Eugene Meatyard, actually earned a living off being an optician working for a company that also sold photographic equipment, which is where Meatyard's inspiration could have begun. He originally brought his first camera to photograph his son, however he then became intrigued in photography and became a member of the Lexington Camera club in 1954. Meatyard experimented with various forms of photographic abstraction with particular focus on depth of field and focus.
With the selected images of Meatyard's work I have chosen, he displays no focus in any of the photos which disguises the subject and makes the usual 'focus' of a photograph obscured. |
Saul Leiter
Saul Leiter was originally a painter then decided to work in the field of photography for many years starting in the 1940's. Leiter's work explores colour and the unusual framing of photos. He often focuses on a subject but with also half of another object or person blocking most of the photo. This unusual approach to photography meant that Leiter became an influence to many and the use of colour photography became popular.
In Leiter's work the element of focus is experimented with in a different way to Meatyard's work, as he technically keeps the photo in focus but just abstracts the subject of focus. |
Uta Barth
Uta Barth was born in 1958 in Berlin, Germany. She is a contemporary photographer who now lives and works in Los Angeles. Barth has the aim to create visual perception as the subject of her work. Barth has stated her interest in the use of natural light to acquire the blurred and "in the moment" type photo. She explores the use of cropped frames and shallow depth of field to focus in on one element of her photo, or sometimes even none.
Barth is different to Leiter in the way of which she does not obstruct her subject through use of other objects but simply by bringing the subject into the foreground and blurring the rest. This is similar in a way to Meatyard's work where there is mostly no focus at all. |
My Response
Getting inspiration from the above artists, I then decided to play around and experiment with focus myself. I either purposely had nothing in focus to blur the subject and viewers perception, or only had a small element of the photo in focus by using a shallow depth of field on F2.5.