Soft Focus

An iris bloom with an odd choice of focus

Let me tell you about the most amazing photograph- the one I almost took!

The subject of this "almost" photograph was one of those unique moments in time when nature suddenly reveals herself in the most dramatic colors imaginable. 

Here is how the photo almost came to be.

Last weekend, we went to a wedding in the nearby city of Hamilton. We were heading home in the car on Sunday afternoon, when suddenly the late day sun broke through the heavy purply-grey cloud cover illuminating the golden colored fall landscape and bathing the sandstone exterior of Dundurn Castle, which we just happened to be passing, in the most amazing light. The scene was simply magical!

By the time I turned to my husband to remark on this apparition, the moment had passed. The cloud cover swallowed up the sunlight in one rude gulp and left the landscape with an empty, grey November wrapper.

The image is fixed in my imagination, but sadly I can not share its magnificence- I find I stumble and trip over my words- I best describe the world visually. That is why I like photography and painting.

These slightly blurry Astrantia flowers look as if they are floating on water.

While I am happiest working with visual images, this is not to say that creating them is not without challenges.

What is the hardiest thing for me when it comes to taking a good picture? Focus! Focus & Focus! 

I can't tell you how may times I have reviewed a batch of photographs only to be deeply disappointed to find perfectly lovely shots ruined by soft or misdirected focus. 

Sometimes, okay hubby would say a lot of times, I am way to impatient. As I said at the top of the post, moments pass and I get too wrapped up in getting it all on "film" before it disappears. 

And cameras can be uncooperative, mechanical things. I feel about cameras like I do about cars- as long as they run, I really don't care to look under the hood. While negotiating the buttons and knobs on our camera seem to be second nature for my husband, I struggle to learn how to use them to my advantage.

This a Yucca against a pale blue sky of a summer day- if only it were in better focus!

The blurry water bubbles at the bottom of the frame tell the tale- not quite in sharp focus- but I have to say that water always looks fresh, no matter how badly you mess up the shot!

This a shot that hubby took. (Yes, bad focus is catching!) 

Can you guess what it is? It is a glass of beer! 

It kind of looks like an abstract painting doesn't it? 

It was a super hot day and were sitting having a drink on a patio at the Royal Botanical Gardens. The image is the surrounding garden seen through the frost covered surface of the ice cold beer.

Some of my favorite soft focus images are of daylilies. I find when shooting daylilies it is hard to determine where I want to set the focus- the flowers petals?- the stamens?- the pollen covered anthers?

When a flower is delicate it seems less important that the focus is dead-on. This is borage (herb).

I have no idea what happened here. Camera shakes maybe? Can you guess what this surreal looking image is? 

It is a goldfish and the weird white blobs are air bubbles in the tank.

These fireworks are cilantro flowers. The focus was mistakenly set to the back of the flower.

Red and deep orange flowers can be tricky to photograph unless you have a good camera. 

This is me trying to shoot a nasturtium in bright sunlight with our older, not so great, Kodak camera. It is almost...maybe if you squint your eyes and move away from the screen in focus. The detail is lost on the flower petals...

but the intensity of the orange is kind of neat, don't you think?

This is dill-again a shot that hubby took. I am not sure if the dill moved in the wind or he moved the camera, but the result is this double looking image.

What do I like best about photography? Forcing myself to really see- to look closer, harder- not to overlook anything. Of course when you are that dedicated, you can get strange looks!

I was in a, dare I admit it publicly, Tim Horton's parking lot waiting for hubby to return with our morning coffee, when I saw this ornamental grass swaying in the wind. It was soft and feathery and so very pretty that I got out the camera to take a few shots. ( Hey, beauty lurks in even the most unexpected places!)

Didn't I get some oddest looks and prolonged stairs!! I am sure they either thought that I was certifiably crazy or maybe that I must be doing some weird surveillance work. (It was after all one of the more iffy Tim's, where they lock the bathrooms in the evening and make you ask for a key if you need to use it.)

I wish I could say that I was rewarded with perfect images.

It was the wind that did me in this time!

I found that I had only just brought the lens into focus when the wind whipped in and swirled the downy tendrils of the grass into a soft, blurry mass. I did get a few good shots, but most, like the ones above, were way too soft.

I never tire of looking at images and I have to say that there are some amazing garden photographs out there in the blogosphere. It is both a humbling and inspiring experience to read your garden blogs.

Now that its fall, what's was your favorite photograph you took this spring or summer?

Or maybe there is an awesome photograph that you almost took?