Shutter Sisters

b is for blur

By

Because it’s how I remember things. It’s how memories unfold in my mind. when I close my eyes and try to remember, this is what I see: lovely, blurry scenes. I’ve been shooting this way for a while, for three or four years now. Not exclusively, of course, but more and more. I intentionally throw the focus until it feels rights. Until it looks like what I see in my mind. So often, these are the images I revisit, the ones I come back to again and again. These are the photographs that tell the real story. They spin like records on a turntable– soft, scratchy, inexplicably magic. 

If you’ve not yet tried it, go ahead. Today, I invite you to intentionally throw your focus. Fiddle with the lens til you find magic. And please, share the blur. Share it with us here today.  

Comments

  10. I think about this a lot. The ability to control blur was one of the main reasons I was so determined to trade up to a dslr a few years back. The impressionistic aspect of blur creates this interesting dynamic for me. It takes me back to that real life moment when i took the shot – how i felt in it as life moved around me and i stood still for a second, but it also introduces a universality to the image. This is especially true for me when people's faces are blurred, it becomes easier to put myself inside someone else's picture and feel it.

    I help run a flickr group called bokeh people. http://www.flickr.com/groups/bokehpeople/pool/with/5182309870/
    for images where what's blurred is people that is chockful of images that move me just this way.

    Here's one of my own recent bokeh people shots
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/damiec/8067571244/

  12. I think about this a lot. The ability to control blur was one of the main reasons I was so determined to trade up to a dslr a few years back. The impressionistic aspect of blur creates this interesting dynamic for me. It takes me back to that real life moment when i took the shot – how i felt in it as life moved around me and i stood still for a second, but it also introduces a universality to the image. This is especially true for me when people's faces are blurred, it becomes easier to put myself inside someone else's picture and feel it.

    I help run a flickr group called bokeh people. http://www.flickr.com/groups/bokehpeople/pool/with/5182309870/
    for images where what's blurred is people that is chockful of images that move me just this way.

    Here's one of my own recent bokeh people shots
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/damiec/8067571244/