FOCUS IN THE RIGHT PLACE
I was out walking with a friend recently. He had asked me for some help as he was having trouble with a certain lack of sharpness in his photos.
When a lens focuses on an object, some of the distance in front of the object will be sharp as will some of the distance behind the object. The wider the aperture of the lens, the smaller will be the overall distance in focus. As a general rule of thumb, it is said that approximately one-third of the overall depth of field will lie between the photographer and the object, and two-thirds will be between the object and the horizon.
Going back to my friend, we took some trial photos and, after observing his technique and discussing how he was choosing his settings, we discovered that he always focused on the horizon when taking landscapes. There it was. By focusing on the horizon, the only useful depth of field he was getting in his photos was the one-third in front of the focus point. He was wasting the advantage of the full range provided by his lens and the nearer foreground of his images was much less sharp than it could have been.
The solution was for him to focus on an object that was about one third of the distance into the landscape. He was then able to get a much sharper image with everything from the horizon to somewhere in front of the object in focus. There seems to be a similar principle with life: we often focus at the wrong point.
Some years ago a new group of people was discovered living in an isolated part of the Amazonian rainforest. Up to that point they had had no contact with the outside world. The interesting thing about this people was that they had no concept of time; they just lived in the now. Each day was the same, involving the routine hunt for food; meal preparation, and if there was time remaining, leisure. They did not create goods or store up food for tomorrow to save themselves work and to increase their free time. They did not need to; they just got up the next day and did it all over again. Why create today what you need for tomorrow? There was always food. There was always time.
I found the account interesting because our belief about tomorrow shapes our actions here and now.
If there is no tomorrow and we just focus on the foreground, we will see differently and live differently, than if our focus was farther out. When driving, most people apparently focus just about as far as the bumper in front, which can all too easily lead to getting caught out.
Focusing on the short-term makes us notice our immediate gains and losses and leads to us prioritising without proper regard for the future consequences for ourselves, on others or, as we see increasingly, on our environment.
Then, of course, there is the opposite problem, like my friend. Focusing too far away alters the balance the other way. Sometimes, it is possible to focus so far into the future that we don’t notice the obvious right under our noses and we find that, when we finally get there, reality and our dreams or expectations parted company some while back. The consequences of long sight can also lead to getting caught out.
Perhaps then, as when taking landscapes, we need to recognise that the key elements in the landscape of our lives (the here and now and eternity) both need to feature, and the best way to present a sharp image is to focus in the right place.
