Library Aisle

I want to hear about the DOF: do you guys think this is good, or

should it be deeper? Any other comment is welcome too.

 

Thanks!

I'm no expert, but to my eyes, the fuzzy foreground books are distracting and interrupt the continuity the eye expects - of course, maybe that's what you were trying to do. Interesting idea.

I stared at this photo for a long time, trying to put into words what it was that was bothering me. I decided that, since both the foreground and the background were out of focus, it fell into the "selective focus" image category. Immediately then I was able to identify my difficulty, i.e., in my experience, selective focus images are mostly successful only when the out-of-focus elements are significantly blurred. This was not the case here.

 

However, in photography, as in many other areas, there are no hard and fast rules, hence this is merely a report on my reaction. Thanks for submitting it. It got me, for a short while at least, thinking about something else beside the WTC horror.

 

Normally, it's nice to see the closer stuff in focus, but then again many shots like this have been done that way. The feeling I got when I first looked at it, was that I was walking and the the closer areas blurred as they passed into my periferal (sp?) vision.

Definitely narrowing the depth of field turns this shot from a boring one into an interesting one. The out of focus background gives a great feeling of distance to the shot, but I find the foreground distracting, so I would focus closer.

I thing the picture would benefit from mor DOF.

I think the DOF criteria would depend on the subject. Since, I haven't been able identify any solid subject here. I would say, at least with this DOF, the picture is very uninteresting. However, if you had just wanted to show an aisle of books, then the maximum depth of field with a wide-angle lens would have been a better choice. The wide-angle effect would have exaggerated the books near the lens, thus making the subject stronger.