One of the most important lessons I learned in the early stages of my photography is that you should try remove distracting elements from your image. Just simply keep changing the composition to remove elements that do not contribute to your motif until all that remains is exactly what you want to show with the photo. For this reason, wideangle lenses are difficult to use for beginners because wideangles tend to include too much. That, in turn, is the reason why many beginners want to use wideangles because they want to cram their image as full of stuff as possible… but I digress.Since I work mostly with closeups, my challenge always lies with what to do with the background. A proper closeup image has a smooth background which does not contain any elements that would steal attention from your subject. The operative part of this is ”steal attention”, quite simply, it doesn’t really matter what your background looks like as long as it’s not a distraction. The easiest way to accomplish this is to have a completely out-of-focus background and this is what I’ve been striving at. In my eye, the only recognisable element in the image should be the subject, subject and nothing else but the subject.
My favourite lens used to be the 100mm f2.8 macro. Achieving completely blurred background was a bit of a challenge for me but I succeeded on occasion. Then I got the 300mm f4L and problem was instantly solved. Now I could really get those backgrounds I’ve always dreamed about, just see my previous blog entries and you’ll see it’s my favourite topic. But then, a funny thing happened. The images I thought were the pinnacle of my achievement left other people stone cold. Shock horror, ”technical perfection” doesn’t equal to ”perfect photo”? In my quest to eliminate distractions I had ended up eliminating any appeal the photo might have as well. There is an in-between I had overlooked. It is possible to hint of the background or foreground without diminishing the subject. It is possible to fill up the empty space of the OOF BG without distractions. Instead of the close-up nirvana I thought I had achieved with the new lens, I am now facing a challenge which cannot be solved with cash. I’ve seen other people solve this dilemma, now it’s my turn. Now we’ll see if I’m really a photographer, or just a geek with shiny new gear.
Or I could just show my true colours and not give a damn. If I like my OOF backgrounds, then what’s it to me if no one else does? I wish. Unfortunately, I seem to be compelled to produce an image that other people like. Just look at the ”In search of style” entry below. It also seems, in search of a clue!