My sponsor Zeiss has announced a spectacular new line of lenses, the “Milvus” lenses. As a prelude to the product launch, I got to work with two of the lenses, the Milvus 21mm f/2.8 wide-angle and the Milvus 100mm f/2 macro, when they were in pre-production. The photos in this story were made with these lenses, and the text below is from the article Zeiss has posted (titled The poet among the photographers) as part of the campaign launch with more about my experience working with the Milvus lenses.

When Flowers Talk © Harold Davis

A poet that photographs – that’s the answer Harold Davis gives when people ask him about his profession. He paints with light and captures the world as he imagines it – he is the impressionist among photographers. Rangefinder Magazine has described Davis as a man with a remarkable range of abilities. Clicking through his portfolio on his website, it’s hard to believe that all the pictures you see were taken by the same photographer.

This versatility is the reward for decades of being active in both the arts and technology. In the early 1990s, Davis stored his camera for a few years in order to start programming software and write books about technology. You can sense his abilities in both of these fields when he talks about his work. “A photograph only records the light reflected by the object,” he explains, “and with this light I try to be creative and make interesting patterns, or form light like a sculpture.” What he likes to do most is “paint” spectacular landscapes, flowers, old buildings and beautiful women. Painting can also be taken literally: Davis studied fine arts in the 1970s and sometimes resorts to traditional paint brush and canvas.

Read more.

Floral Conference © Harold Davis

“As if painted – Harold Davis is famous for his photographs of flower blossoms”

Golden Gate Bridge from Battery Spencer © Harold Davis

Panorama of the Kumano Sanzen Roppyaku Po © Harold Davis

A Modern Pilgrimage: Along the Kumano Kodo by Harold Davis is an artist book and portfolio of images that astutely blends old-craft hand traditions and materials with and cutting-edge new technologies to create an exquisite limited edition art book and art object that is completely unique. Read more.

Much of the time we photographers are concerned with sharpness—how to make a photo that is “tack sharp,” how to manage depth-of-field (or even how to focus stack), how to get the best out of autofocus, and relearning the lost craft of manually focusing.

Silhouettes © Harold Davis

I’m here to tell you that intentionally creating an image with blur, one that is not in focus, or is focused on the “wrong” place, or in which the duration the shutter is open does not stop motion, can be a great expression of the craft and art of photography.

In Silhouettes (shown above) the blur was created by focusing extremely close in the foreground (with a telephoto lens) rather than on the figures that make up the composition.

So this is a focus blur, rather than a motion blur (the image was photographed at La Defense in Paris at 180mm, 1/500 of a second, f/6.3, and ISO 200). In point of fact, this image is about the semi-abstracted figures and the pattern of their relationship with each other. This negative-space pattern is only created because the figures themselves are blurred.

By the way, using a slow shutter speed to blur motion, or throwing a lens out of focus are far from the only way to produce a blurring effect, which is also sometimes called a “soft focus” effect. A classical approach to creating the soft focus look is to put something in front of the lens, such as a nylon stocking or a filter coated with Vaseline. Raindrops on a lens also work to blur the outlines and contours  of the subject you are photographing.

Obviously, it is also possible to add various kinds of blur in post-production, although somehow I never get quite the same blurring look as when I generate my blurs in the camera.

So next time you get out there photographing, and if perhaps a sharply-focused image isn’t working, consider playing and experimenting with blur: motion blur, focus blur, shoving something in front of the lens blur. Long live blur!

You can get more of the context of my blurred Silhouette image in a related story: Stairs at La Defense.