The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

Focus

I was recently hired to do a couple of photo shoots by a studio. Well really just by another photographer.
This particularly human being was off to Hong Kong for a week to buy herself a R27 000 camera, and she probably figured she could still earn money while away by hiring me to do her job. In other words, to be her. During this process, of hiring me for this job, she asked me if I was interested in buying her old camera. I should have smelled the rat then.

In any event, I got called the day before the first shoot and told the shoot was that day, and quickly got my ass out the door and into action. Was an interesting venue, sunny, and I came away with about 600 photos. I was briefed to provide between 80-120 and I provided around 180.

Then I did a second shoot on an overcast day, all of it indoors. I also took around 500 photos there.
I spent the entire weekend editing the pictures, and basically gave all the work a lot of time. Each shoot was basically going to earn me R1000 in the pocket, and time on site was about 2 hours alone. I probably spent 2-3 hours editing each set.

When I delivered the pictures on the Monday I expected effusive praise. Instead, when I arrived the photographer treated me to a story and an image of her and her mother sitting beside some poor Asian girl, wearing masks because they felt this person stank so much. She said they thought the girl had chronic hallitosis, but instead it turned out to be cabbage or something in the girl's backpack.
Then my photography friend ushered me into her office, which stank of curry. She apparently didn't realise the irony right there, as she opened the window.

So she went through my photos silently and at one point suggested I visit a website on digital photography which could teach me a lot. I guess this suggested that she thought her work was of a higher standard than mine, not something I'd really be inclined to throwthe towel in on. When I arrived home I received a call saying 90% of the photos were unusable because apparently they were all out of focus.
I've never heard that before.
I was quite shocked.
I went back and looked at the pictures, and sure enough, they weren't 'crisp'. But they weren't out of focus either. Some were ultra-close-ups of food where you could see the pepper grains. Others were wider shots, others were shots of people socialising. They all had a soft appearance, which is what happens when you have a large aperture setting for your camera. To give you an example, you'll have objects in a particular part of the field in focus with other parts out of focus. Some of the wider angle shots are in focus, but it depends on what you're trying to achieve of course. Most people - I find - prefer foregrounds or middle grounds in focus to a series of bland photos where in every shot everything is in focus.

I suspected that the photographer was being both overly precious and overly pedantic. I'm a perfectionist, and I have high standards, but frankly these standards she was applying appeared somewhat...what's the word... Ah: SUSPECT. To verify this I thought I've familiarise myself with her work.

So, as I say, I had the photographer who hired me basically calling all my work unusable. I went and had a look at her website for her photos and found this:

Frankly these are not the sort of photos I would want to write home about. Especially not if I went all the way to Hong Kong to buy THE WORLD'S BEST FUCKING CAMERA. I also reckon you can do a million courses and have the best camera in the world, if you have a shitty eye, or lack imagination, those are the cards you've been dealt.



Now I'm not sure if you'd use the word 'crisp' for any one of these pictures which she is using to define her best work. Of course, for some reason, a standard she doesn't apply to herself, she applies to me.
I suggested that even though she found my work unacceptable, she could allow the client/s to decide for themselves. I'd take full responsibility either way. I then went back and spent another 4-6 hours re-editing all the work, and suggested she provide two sets to both clients. One set of my edits, and one set of sharper edits.

The client paid in full for the work, but complained that several photographs were missing. This obviously meant my pal hadn't provided both sets, but only the second set, the one she felt was of an acceptable standard. Despite being paid in full by the client, she paid me 40%, which is basically a rejection fee.
The other client asked for a discount, and the spokesperson described this client as 'very fussy'. Of course I was told both shoots had been 'rejected outright' for being 'out of focus'.

By paying two rejection fees, the studio effectively made a profit of 60% on one of the jobs, which I guess went toward paying for that R27 000 camera.

But the interesting thing I noticed, was I started looking around at advertising, to billboards, pictures in magazines, even a movie I watched that afternoon. I paid particular attention to the cinematography. It occurred to me that very little photography is in 'sharp' focus. Even the image right at the top of this post, which is from a college of digital photography website [which my photography friend kindly suggested I visit in order that I learn how to take photos] is actually out of focus. Have a look at the eyelashes. Yup, slightly blurry. You know even when images are in focus we tend to view them with a slightly out of focus gaze because we are so used to the indistinct image from digital LCD screens.
The more I started looking around with this new found religion of IS EVERY FUCKING PHOTO CRISP? the more I started to see how much isn't. I was gobsmacked. Even television ads - badly out of focus. One of them is that VW ad featuring 'ridiculously small prices'.

I'm not trying to rationalise my work here. I'm pointing out two very interesting things.
1] A lot of visuals are intentionally a little softer in order to facilitate special effects, so that they can appear seamlessly integrated. The latest Wolverine movie is an example, so is Lord of the Rings, so is Star Wars. So the point may be intentional [as in my case] to create a softer, sort of dreamy effect, where your eyes fill in that magic space between crisp reality and fantasy.
2] The other point is that I noticed while I was scouring the internet and various publications for examples of ultra-crisp I came upon this startling reality. My eyes are geared towards a slight degree of fuzz. Is it just me or is this generally so? Probably as a result of being 37 years old and not wearing glasses. But probably due, even more so, to staring at LCD screens all day. Even when I look at other people's faces I tend to see a blur, unless I really make an effort to focus. High definition, but a blur.

I discovered that the convention, the industry standard, happens to be this softer image. In other words, everything we're seeing, almost all of it, is just slightly out of focus. It says a lot for the world we live in, that we're already one small step away from just seeing things around us. Today, driving back from Pretoria, I'd been away from my computer for around 24 hours, and I glanced from the highway to Sandton. It may be a combination of the rain creating clearer skies than usual, and also resting my eyes, but I have never seen the crossword of little square lights of those towers in such high definition.

I believe this parable says something about a person who comes across someone elses work and suddenly invents a brand new standard. It reminds me of some religious people who apply a hypothetical standard very strictly to others, and are great about grandstanding perfect virtues. But they fail to apply these standards to themselves. I think about people like Joost, but we're probably all guilty of this from time to time.

It gets worse though. My photographer friend who expects me to shoot sharper pictures than she does [despite her having a Hong Kong special worth R27 000] when I point out she's being unreasonable then accuses me of being sexist. I'm arguing with her because I'm a man and she's a woman. Does she have no shame. In South Africa if you catch someone doing something wrong there's always a get-out-of-it clause that is absolutely fail safe. Accuse your accuser of racism. That's an instant demerit, and discredit.
When whites disagree with each other what do they say? Call your accuser sexist. If they're the same sex? Call them elitist. Call them something, but do not pass Begin, do not collect R200, and don't ever focus on anything because you might see things - and yourself - the way you really are, rather than the way you want to see it.