I am a fussy myopic, or at least that is what an optometrist told me back in the 80’s. Apparently, according to him people with my eye condition are more likely to wear the coating off their lenses through obsessive cleaning in the quest for pin sharp resolution. Long-sighted people, he said, could get away with uncooked pastry on their lenses and be quite happy. Mrs O’s late mother was one of those.

Anyway, I am obsessed with depth of field and plane of focus in much of my work whilst also relishing the delights of good bokeh. Much of the pixel counting photography press is obsessed with image sharpness to the extent that colour, shape and composition and narrative seem to go out of the window. I know what my aperture ring is for and I understand the sweet spot on my large and medium format cameras where I go for sharpness from the bottom of my tripod to Timbuktu with my large format landscape work but am happy with the beautifully shallow depths of field I can achieve with my medium format cameras.

One of the tools in my digital bag has reputedly one of the most detailed and sharp (coupled with the right lenses) sensors in the world and I do indeed relish the degree of resolved detail from the images I make with it.

Regular readers of this blog will know that at the end of this week I open a new exhibition – Contradictions- with two fellow photographers. This is a chapter in a long running cooperative and collaborative exploration of the constant changing of the docklands of the Orwell. Well, I was out on my bike this morning and took in the newly pasted images on the hoarding around Ipswich Wet Dock for Photoeast that officially opens on 24th May. That spurred me to go down later with a camera and make some more images.

The term Contradictions is a significant descriptor for our work in that much is contrary in the time between images being made from the same spot. I had wandered around to Neptune Quay to make some more images from a regular viewpoint as the clouds were looking good. I had my contact lenses in and I cannot see the display on the back of the camera when I am wearing them. I have to rely on the data and image in the viewfinder and trust the tool to deliver what I intended, and what was in my mind’s eye. This is no different from me shooting film really. It is just a case of making sure I know what I am using and trusting my judgement.

Then a penny dropped. I knew that with this lens and camera combo, that the images would be pin-sharp but because of my own optics I could not see that. A big thought bubble popped out of my head ‘Why not turn off auto focus, drop the lens aperture to widest at F1.4 and ramp up the shutter speed for a perfect exposure value?’ Then I would be seeing the view with a representation of my uncorrected vision.

So here they are;

To an uneducated eye, these will all look out of focus but they are are all in focus. It is the combination of a short focus distance and a very wide aperture that creates this illusion. I rather like them and they will go in my scrapbook to accompany my pin sharp work in the exhibition as a Contradiction.