First of all, thanks to each one of the 13 members who submitted an image for the 75th Cameraderie Challenge! You've given me an honorable but difficult task in judging your entries.
When opening this Challenge, I set the theme as Foreground Blur, and indicated it can be used for context, atmosphere, or to partially or wholly obscure the actual subject to add intrigue. This will be included in my frame of reference for judging the images, along with originality and technical merit.
First up is
David1701, with a B&W shot of a lighthouse, mostly obscured by what appear to be dunes and a strand of barbed wire. There's plenty of negative space in the sky, with whispy clouds drifting over this scene carefree. Lighthouses are a common subject in coastal shots, and signify hope and safety due to the role they perform for shipping (although GPS has obviously made them more of a backup than a main means of navigation). Lighthouses are also commonly associated with beach time, a feeling of freedom. I like how the shot juxtaposes this with the barbed wire, indicating that coastlines are also borders, in days of old more than now a feature that needed to be fortified. The foreground blur makes sure the eye is drawn to the lighthouse first and the barbed wire only second, but having it frame the lighthouse leaves us in no doubt about its deliberate inclusion.
Pierre also submitted a B&W shot (as did many others; is there something about foreground blur that works better in B&W?), but an image that is much more unambiguously sweet and pretty than David's image above. By having the nearest petals of the flower almost disappear in the foreground blur, it reinforces the ethereal aspect of this flower. This effect is made stronger by the highlights falling right on the petal coming straight towards the viewer. The flower's stems are in focus, as is a decent proportion of the petals in the background, showcasing their silken texture, which stands out all the more thanks to the nearer petals falling out of focus. Lovely use of foreground blur.
5354Photos: without the foreground blur I'd be unsure how large the subject was; a statue of a person with the arms straight down, standing on top of a building of some sort. The branches barely visible through the foreground blur add a touch of wonder and surrealism to an already eerie composition, and the subtle patches of green seem to place this image in early spring. The branches also add visual interest to the image. Overall I'm getting some serious Magritte vibes, that I'm pretty sure would be much less strong without the intrigue added by those blurry branches.
Fredric has used foreground blur - a glass of beer, a reflecting table and a chair - to add to the feeling of being right there on the terrace with these ladies. the foreground blur helps in framing the shot, with the table somewhat mirroring the white umbrella above, the glass's stem mirroring the red pillar and the glass's angle somewhat mirroring the lady's silhouette. The specular highlights from the out of focus content of the glass only reinforce my desire for a nice cold glass of beer!
Paul has a shot that just oozes spring. When I first saw this on my phone, the foreground blur was not that obvious, but viewing it on a proper monitor, it's obvious. It appears to be heather in the foreground, although I could be mistaken; it certainly gives a sense of threedimensionality to the image. That might've been even stronger if the image had been shot from a lower angle, making the blurry part of the foreground more prominent in the shot, although that would've taken away the view of the progression of shrubs covering the forest floor.
Mike's image made me laugh, as it made me feel like the seagull is deliberately photobombing your shot, and feeling proud of it. That's probably not the case; its placement definitely changes the visual balance of this tranquil scene for the better. By virtue of it being a seagull, it also adds context; presumably we're not looking at a river somewhere far inland, but either a seashore or an estuary.
Matero's image is very neatly divided into four or five planes (stuff on table; person 1; person 2/stuff on second table; person 3; and wall with artworks). It's also a classic example of creating a strong sense of perspective without using any actual lines to lead the eye. The foreground layers are blurred, but the plate in the foreground is just about recognizable enough to place the viewer at another table in the cafe or restaurant. I like that the central layer, the only one really in focus, features a person facing away from the viewer; it adds a nice layer of mistique. Having the lady in the fourth layer facing this person, and looking at something with a deliberate expression, makes me curious what they're talking about. Very well composed!
AlwaysOnAuto: you can't go wrong with a photo of a camera collection on a photography forum ;-) I like how the blurred foreground has lines crossing the main left-right orientation of the subject, and lines reinforcing that orientation. This is repeated in the background. The gleaming arc of the lens mount on the subject camera wraps around the blurred viewfinder in the foreground nicely. I want to make my way through the foreground and drink in the details of that beautiful camera. Effective use of foreground blur.
Don: the fireworks catch the eye first. There's always difficulty in judging depth with fireworks, but the blurry smoke trails in the foreground, lit up in bright red, give a disorienting effect that I find quite appealing. There's also some sort of fence or powerlines in the foreground, that makes it clear that these fireworks are very high overhead indeed. Puffs of smoke in less defined shapes, made more mysterious by being blurry, are drifting between the powerlines, adding to the unexpectedly ominous feeling of this cheerful photo.
Miguel places us almost at cat's eye level, with the blurred foreground of the stool or table's legs making us feel part of the cat's experience as it navigates through the house, with the furniture becoming obstacles or challenges depending on your mood. Having the cat's eyes locked on something in (or behind) the blurred foreground makes it feel like there's something we should know about, right over our shoulder.
Quist enters a surrealist shot. The quality of the light, yellow with a greenish tint, already starts this off. The flattened perspective of an apartment building shot from a distance, with its leading lines appearing to defy our normal sense of physics, gives a disorienting effect. Having the out-of-focus seagull dead right in the center makes me wonder - did it happen to fly into a shot of an appartment building, or was it always the subject? Regardless, it makes this shot very quirky and surrealist, which it wouldn't have been nearly as much if the seagull had been in focus. I like it!
Bozzie enters a photo of a dead tangle of trees and vines, in an utterly desolate landscape, partially hidden behind a blurred mound of curiously textured soil in the foreground. There's plenty of negative space above to reinforce the feeling of emptiness, and the foreground blur plays a big role in giving this image a sense of scale and mistique. I'm getting some Better Call Saul vibes here (and the photography on that series is Juicy AF, pardon my French, so that's a high compliment).
Chistian's shot of a boat that looks very, very stranded has the bow almost disappear in blurriness. The wide angle shot, reinforcing the leading lines of the boat, could (presumably) also have been taken with the foreground in focus - but by choosing not to, the leaves in the foreground become blurry, like brown water, making it feel almost as if the bow of the boat is still floating as it once would have been. The bow being rendered so blurry also gives a misty-eyed feeling of what once was. On a phone I barely noticed the foreground blur, but on a large screen, it adds to the image's strength immensely!
So now for the most difficult part, choosing a winner. As I was analyzing each photo, multiple times I thought, 'wow surely this image will be it?'. After going back and forth a LOT - I love the various uses of foreground blur that are displayed here! - I've settled on a top five, aka the
honorable mentions, consisting of the following images in order of appearance:
- David, lighthouse and barbed wire, for the storytelling achieved by the juxtaposition in the subject and the blurred foreground;
- Matero, perspective and context at a cafe, for the pure craft of composition, with the blurred foreground making us feel like a voyeur in the scene;
- Quist, seagull in front of apartment building, for the strongly surrealist effect;
- Bozzie, dead branches in desolate landscape, for the way the simple but very effective use of a blurred foreground adds mystique to an already bleak image; and
- Christian, stranded boat in a blurry sea of leaves, for the way the foreground blur adds a whole new way of reading the image.
Out of these five, with perhaps half a percent preference over the others, I choose Christian's boat in blurry leaves; as I indicated, once I saw the blurry foreground on a large screen, it added a new way of reading the image for me, which was a very happy surprise indeed.
Congratulations Christian! You get the honor of hosting the 76th Cameraderie Challenge; I look forward to seeing the theme you come up with!
I will be back shortly.
