Soft Focus

The ball cactus clusters in my yard are just now coming to bloom.   Today, I am posting two photographs I captured of the same cactus.  This particular cactus is growing very close to my bay windows.  I captured the first image three days ago in gentle light diffused by rainclouds.  I softened the focus to allow a certain blending of lines and colors.  I took the second photograph in full light yesterday afternoon.  The second photograph employs a much sharper focus and fills the screen with more distinct detail.

Interestingly enough, I prefer the inexact qualities of the softly focused photograph.   In some ways that is a reflection of my personal life.  I tend to enjoy organization and neatness only to a certain point—what you might call a point of practicality.  Beyond that is what I consider obsession.  In construction, as example, I have seen a few new subcontractor foremen who expended so much labor trying to keep materials super-organized and work areas ever clean they fell behind the rest of the naturally chaos-generating crews and actually lost money for their employer.  They became so busy with organizing stuff they forgot that they had a structure to build. 

I also like the inaccurate and ghostly views provided by morning fog.   In sound, I prefer the muted rolling of creek water as heard through a veil of trees—a place where the sound of the creek does not drown-out the call of nearby birds or the sound of wind shuffling aspen leaves.

I like a place where lines and colors merge together.

 

 

--Mitchell Hegman