One thing that drives me nuts is when people screw up their own language, especially when they do it thinking they are correct! I don't mind it when someone knows better and simply makes a point of mistakes, in a joking manner. Like when someone pronounces "scissors" as "skissors", or when they pronounce the "k" in knife, knee or knob, that is funny and obviously a purposeful mispronunciation . What drives my nutty however, is the misstatement of a normal everyday expression, and there is one in particular that has been bugging me lately and it seems to be getting worse.
For all of my life there has been an expression using an adjective, to express surprise, and the expression is, "All
of a sudden..." Somewhere in the last few years I have noticed various people using the misstated expression, "All
the sudden..." Apparently it began as the slight misstatement, "All
of the sudden..." but somewhere along the line people began dropping the "of" from the expression and they have managed to bastardize an already bastardized expression! What the hell is wrong with saying it correctly? Drives me nuts!!
Now the other thing that I have been thinking about lately has to do with relationships. Specifically, how people treat each other in them. I have been noticing recently that many people in long term relationships treat each other quite poorly. It is odd to me how the behavior that we wouldn't tolerate in strangers, or even our friends, we let our "lovers" get away with regularly. We often let them walk over our feelings and treat us with near disdain, and disrespect. Yet, if the people that we called friend treated us with half of the same disrespect we would drop them from our lives and probably never talk to them again. However, when the person that we share our life with treats us this way, we give them chance after chance, and yet they do it over and over again. If you caught a friend lying to you on multiple occasions, you would walk away from them and find new friends. If you found your friends stealing from you, you would not remain friends for very long, still, time and again those that we "love" are allowed another chance. Stupid people. If you can't be friends with someone, how can you fall in love with them? I just don't get it!
Now we come to the next picture and you will notice that there seems to be a huge portion of it that it out of focus, and indeed, there is. What has happened is that the depth of focus has been shallowed out to the minimum of the lens set-up. Because it isn't a specifically designed "macro" lens, the minimal depth is about 1.25 inches, rather than millimeters, however it is what I have to work with so it will do. As you look at the picture you will notice that the very front stems are in focus, from the ground to the tips. Both the foreground and the background of the picture are out of focus and the eye is naturally drawn to the sharp field. The Camera has not been moved from the first picture, only the F-stop has been changed thereby narrowing the focal plane. Go ahead and click on it and study the larger version for a minute or two.
Now we come to the 3rd picture and this time the focal plane has been shifted to the center of the group. Again the eye is drawn to the sharply focused stems in the center of the field. Notice that the white stripe in the center of the bent stems is in clear focus, making it very easy to identify these stems and the blades of the Crocus plant. Would you have as quickly noticed that in the first or second picture? Maybe, but probably not, and now there is now doubt what you are looking at, because it was brought to your attention by the selective focus.
Now we come to the last picture where the focal plane has been moved to the back of the group. Does it do anything special to the picture, other than making the front really fuzzy and the tips in the rear sharp? Not really, because there is really nothing in that area to show. So why show you this picture? Because it shows you that you weren't really missing anything from the other two. Generally it is quite expected to soften the areas of macro pictures that don't have any specific details to look at. The goal is to direct the eye of the observer to the interesting parts of the picture and keep them from wasting time on the useless background.
I hope this gives you a better understanding of the uses and desirability of the soft background in photos. I also hope that perhaps you will take notice of it and how it is used in the pictures you see around you day to day. There are many places where it is desirable to have perfect, crisp, clear focus throughout the entire picture, such as landscapes and forensics, but for Portraiture of specific artistic subjects, sharply focused pictures are a detriment.
