“Sharpness is a bourgeois concept”
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
Cartier-Bresson, no doubt, had tongue firmly in cheek when he dissed sharpness, but the father of “the decisive moment” also knew the value of blur in telling the story.
We have to remember that while today’s equipment gives us the ability to create tack sharp images that photographers even a decade or two ago could never have dreamed of, chasing sharpness just for the sake of sharpness is like a painter using only a single brush for every painting.
Still photographers often face the challenge of conveying motion in an image that by definition is “still”. In such cases, blur can be our friend.
One of the most exciting events that can happen while burning off nitrogen between dives is the appearance of dolphins. No matter how much diesel fueled horsepower you have, dolphins speed ahead of your bow in a seemingly effortless game. It’s hard to believe how fast they are as you lean over and look at the water zipping over, around and past them as if it’s no denser than air to a falcon.
I have much sharper images of dolphins frozen in time at 1/1000 of a second, capturing their grace and beauty. But, when it comes to displaying their shear speed and power, this image with the blur of the ocean and the streaks of each drop flying over the dolphin’s back is the one I turn to.
Location: Dominica
Camera: Canon EOS 60D
Lens: Canon EF-S 18-135
Light: Sunlight
