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Average Joe perception of bokeh and slim DOF

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SorinI

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I have part of my work shown in a local art gallery and I had a lot of fun listening at the comments of the people looking at my photos, without them to know that the guy sitting next to them (me) is the author of the photos. The funniest part is that the average Joe, when watching portraits made with 85mm at f 1.2 – 1.8, he translates the bokeh as the photographer inability to correctly focus on the subject. I even tried to suggest to somebody, again, without to disclose that I am the photographer who took that photo, that maybe the photographer deliberately choose a slim depth of field, to can make more obvious who or what is the subject of the photo. The guy asked: why he should do such a thing? Why I can’t choose which the subject is? Of course I had no reply to his question.
Do you had similar experiences?
 
Yes one of my clients got so upset when she realised that not everyone in the photographs were infocus... I told her that the photo was not of those people, but of that person who stands out clearly.

She must not have had her eyes open when she saw my promo work as i always love to shoot wide open or close to it.
 
Makes perfect sense.

People hate fuzzy pictures taken by pretentious photographers with the inability to relate to viewers and clients.

But they can spend $1500 on a lens and impress the few people who look at the lens and understand the price.

BAK
 
If I understand right your message, then the moral is that we can throw away all the good lens and we can do just fine with cheap zooms f4.5-6, because we will have to shot at f8-f11, so that everything to be in focus?
 
SorinI said:
Why I can’t choose which the subject is?
Click to expand...
Very good question. You probably did not caught his attention with those photos. Photos with shallow depth of field should have something special to them to artistically justify and reason the use of large aperture opening. That special thing might work for some, might not work for others.

--
http://www.libraw.org/
 
Iliah Borg said:
That special thing might work for some, might not work for others.
Click to expand...
I totally agree with you, Iliah. To be honest, the feedback I got from the people looking at the photos where more of a mixed bag: some people love it, some people hate it. This is life.

But I amused when I realized that what we (photogs) appreciate: bokeh, rule of the thirds, etc, to the average Joe that may mean nothing :-)
 
SorinI said:
But I amused when I realized that what we (photogs) appreciate:
bokeh, rule of the thirds, etc, to the average Joe that may mean
nothing :-)
Click to expand...
Well, of course. We can't deliver a message or pass the emotion by simply using bokeh, rule of thirds, or anything else like that. We use them only as tools to convey what we have to say. I do not care what tools the worker I shoot last week used while blowing the glass for a vase, but only care for the end result - how I liked the vase. He and his colleagues however were ready to talk about those tools forever.

--
http://www.libraw.org/
 
Nice shots, Tage.

The shot bellow, although is not from the series I am exposing now, illustrates what I meant in the original post. I post it on a different board section, some people like it, some hate it big time.

 
It could be that they just don't like the picture. The example image you posted is a nice shot, but the background is very busy for my taste, and not quite enough out of focus so that you still try to figure out what that is behind the cat. The images posted just before yours are quite different and the OOF background is completely blurred beyond any recognition and have a nice pop and appeal to them. I'm not meaning to beat up on your picture, just offering another thought about why the people might not like your images where you've blurred the background. You still have to look at the overall composition and what is in the background and how it will look.
--
Regards, Mike - Lot's of Canon Stuff
Victory Photo - http://victoryphoto.com
Photographer in the Northeast? http://NorthEastFoto.com
 
Thesun said:
I actually like your cat image. It's got an old and dramatic look to
it. I use the 24-70 for most of my wedding work at f/4-f/5,6. You'll
have to get really close to your subject to isolate it with a small
dof with the 24-70.

Tage
--
Click to expand...
Thanks, but I have to be real honest in here: it was a lot of Photoshop involved in to that photo. Blur, dodge and burn, but I am sure that you noticed that.

On the other hand, I checked you & your gallery out, and man, I am sorry to tell you, but your work.... is just wonderful! I don't have too much time now, as I have to drive some 80 Km to a location shot, and I have to hit the road, but I browsed thru your creative gallery, and I like everything I see. And I admire you because of the fact that you have the guts to put in practice an old saying: the rules are made to be broken. I bookmarked your site and I will have a better look tonight, when I will be back.
 
Just a few comments on the subject in general:

Personally, I am not a fan of extremely shallow dof. Although there are a lot of shots that can benefit from it, I find 90% of the samples shown to be pretentious (I have not looked at any of yours, just talking about what I generally see around here) as if the fact that it has razor thin dof is enough to make it somehow better than it otherwise would be.

Further, I find the act of using oof to “hide” otherwise distracting backgrounds as sloppy and lazy. I personally do like to have the main subject the main point of focus, as to make them pop a little bit, but the background should complement the subject, not just sit out there in fuzzy nothingness until the edge of the frame is reached. If a person is inclined to sit and spend time trying to decipher what the background objects are thru the hazy boke, the picture is a failure imo.

Now as to the idea that the great unwashed masses can not appreciate a picture because of some technical style of shooting or another, well that is just elitist talk. I can guarantee you that there are technical topics in fields other than photography that your average J6P would look at your lack of understanding and think you “simple” too (Show of hands, when’s the last time you stood and appreciated the benefits of Ackerman steering in your motor vehicles? Or maybe the addition of methacrylate ester as a copolymer in vinyl siding you just ordered to reduce its susceptibility from UV damage from the sun?)

If a picture is pleasing to a person, it is pleasing to them. If the objective is to convey a pleasing picture to these people, and you didn’t, then it is a failure of the photographer. That said, don’t expect to make everyone happy.

-Suntan
 
I like the photo of the cat above, particularly because of the background. Had you blurred the background completely I don’t think it would be very interesting at all.

I do like shallow DOF at times to emphasize the subject (or avoid an ugly or distracting background), I find that photos where the background is completely blurred while sometimes nice to look at, don’t hold my interest very long because there usually isn’t much to see.

Some of the photos I enjoy most are the ones I can come back to over and over and continue to notice how the different parts of the photo give context and interest to the subject.

I have a photo of my wife across from my desk that even though the background is soft, I like that I can still see that it was taken in front of an old rustic fence in our backyard and notice that the boards on the fence are stained with trails of rust from each of the nails. I can also make out the leaves and flowers from the rose bush in front of the fence. Had I blurred the background completely it would look like it was taken in a studio and have very little interest besides recording what she looked like that day.

I hope nobody takes offence to this. It’s only my opinion of the photos I like to look at. I wouldn’t ever want to tell people how to practice there hobbies (or work).

P.S. I know this sounds similar to the post above, it came in while I was typing this so I just replied to it.
 
Shallow DoF is a purely photographic effect, and does NOT occur in human vision. Which means being pleased by blurred backgrounds is a learned response, and we should not be surprised that...

-- not everybody has learned yet
-- not everybody will like it when they have learned it's a deliberate

-- and frankly, why should they? Beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder....

.....and I certainly won't be caught spending millions on a pickled shark, no matter how much anyone else thinks it's lovely. ;-)
--
Regards,
Baz
 
Barrie Davis said:
Shallow DoF is a purely photographic effect, and does NOT occur in
human vision.
Click to expand...
Arguable. When I pick up an object and look closely at it, I'm very aware that all other objects in my field of vision are out of focus until I choose to focus on them. In the gently lit room where I type this, even focussing on objects some metres away appears to render closer objects blurred.

If I look at these other objects that are out of focus, they become sharp but not instantly. The object that was sharp is now blurred.

This bokeh effect is something most of us are aware of. A photograph in which only the subject is sharp is using a technique that is no more or less "purely photographic" than the everything-sharp-everywhere approach. Both are approximations.
 
Your photos haven't effectively communicated whatever it is you want to say if you have to stand next to them and explain their merits.

Average Joe likes Ansel Adams' Moon and Half Dome photograph because it speaks to him. He doesn't care if easy or hard to make.
 
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