 How's it? How's it guys? We need to talk about sharpness in photography and my own introduction into the cult of sharpness came about one Friday afternoon I think it must have been about so 1992 and I was sitting there at photo school in our little what past for computer lab in those days and in there was a little box that the lecturers all fussing over and they opened it up and Polaroid had given the photo school a sprint scan. Okay, so this is one of the first kind of, you know, film scanners and we were like, Oh, this is this is pretty cool. And, you know, we just fed some images into it. And as if by magic, they appeared on that. What was then a giant 21 inch CRT monitor. Maybe those big things that took up like almost like a whole desk. And we don't want to say we pixel peeped, but that's what we did. Obviously, that wasn't really a term then. And we zoomed in on our portraits and used that amazing button, unsharp mask. And we're like, Wow, this is amazing. Look how sharp the eyes are. That's really Wow, we could never do that kind of thing. It's really just great. And I've often thought about where did this idea that sharpness was kind of the the measure of how good a photograph was come from because was evidently in me already. And this culture sharpness is carried on through to today. So like every sort of time, you know, you have people like, like, like almost like clockwork, every six months, releasing videos, talking about how to make your photographs sharp, or why your photographs aren't sharp. And they're always talking about the same things. You know, Oh, it's shutter speeds, you know, when the shutter speed is like the the minimum shutter speed is the focal length of your lens and using low ISO and using a tripod and all these kind of bits and bobs. And they always talk and illustrate it by zooming in to the images of by showing you minute details in this photograph, which is like like, why? Why do that? Because we don't enjoy images from that distance. You know, much like when I was looking on the monitor at a photo school, don't look at a portrait and go up to it, you know, like this one I have here, because you see like I planned this, right? You know, this portrait here, I don't look at it from like an inch away. I look at it from across the room is there to be enjoyed and much as you do when you go to a gallery, you don't go up and stick your noses on the things you don't go up to a painting and go look at the you know, the how well they've rendered this this idea that you enjoy the image itself. And this idea of sharpness as much as I think that it is noble that you try to make your photographs as sharp as possible is not the be all and end all of a good photograph. Now where did this idea of sharpness come from? Now I've got a little theory about this. And it starts with pictorialism. So if you're not familiar with pictorialism, it was it was it was a movement in kind of the late 1800s through to kind of the just prior to the First World War, where photographers wanted to make art, they were trying to separate photography from science and make it more accepted as as an art, because of course, that's the problem with photography, isn't it? It is equal measures science and art. And it's too easy to let the science part of photography take hold. So anyway, so you get these pictorialists, and you know, some names like Alfred Stieglitz and it would stiken and a whole bunch of other people who have now kind of fallen out of favor, but at the time they were they were doing some interesting work and stiken not stiken, sorry, I'm talking Stieglitz always get the two confused. So Stieglitz makes this quote where he says, you know, atmosphere is the medium of nature that that you know, it is what we see all things through. And then he says, you know, to to make sure that we see things in their true value in a photograph, then atmosphere must be present. And then he goes on to say that atmosphere softens all lines. So if when you look at pictorialist photographs, you see that they are very soft. Now granted, some of this is is probably down due to the resolving power of the lenses that they had at the time and all that kind of stuff. And the most important thing though is that this is intentional. I think that they are making a point of like having soft images, images that contain atmosphere. So we're going to co up that word. I'm going to use I like I like this idea of atmosphere rather than then sort of like, you know, feeling mood, right? So anyway, so over time, things improve, you know, cameras get better lenses, you know, film gets gets sharper, film plays a role in this as well. And then you have the rise of straight photography. So this is this is photography that says look, we're not doing all this kind of gum by chromate printing and mucking around with it and stuff like that. We are going to be purists. We are going to, as far as I'm concerned, celebrate the science in photography. And out of this, this group of sort of straight photographers, the most famous was group f 64. So you've probably heard of Ansel Adams and maybe image and Cunningham and Edward Weston. But there was a whole bunch of other people who were involved in this group. And they were very much like, Okay, we're going to have everything is shop. Everything is is done in camera, which I'm going to say is not really kind of a good way of describing it. Because obviously, if you're even remotely familiar with with somebody like, you know, Ansel Adams, you know that there was a whole bunch of things. He visualized the image, he took a specific negative, he processed that negative in a specific way. And then he printed it to get a specific thing. So it's not like it was all just done in camera. Right. But there was a process, a system. Now, that three year period of group f 64, and it was only three years. I mean, it's crazy, you know, we talk about it like it was this massive thing. But that's the point. They were so influential that they have shaped photography for decades. And of course, like is the way with most things, you know, pictorialism fell out of fashion, people were not interested in, in, you know, soft, atmospheric photographs anymore, they wanted reality, a reality needed sharpness, it needed a clarity of thought, and we'll come on to the very famous quote by Ansel Adams in a minute about that. And, and people just kind of did their thing, you know, they forgot about soft focus, then soft focus kind of reared its head again in the 70s and 80s, that kind of feeling. If you were around at the time, you kind of remember, I mean, if you were around, let me know in the comments if you remember all these ads that were dreamy and you know, it's like somebody just constantly breathing on a lens or smearing Vaseline on it. You know, and I'm sure today, people who look at these photographs from that period, you know, all the ads and, and, and some of the portraiture, especially with that glamour portraiture, would probably think this is like some horrible fever dream. It's like, what were you doing? It's like, why would you do that? But that was, it was, it was fashionable. And I can that's kind of, I think what's happened is it was the soft focus thing was fashionable for a bit, but then sharpness has been fashionable with photographers for ages, because it's quantifiable. It's easy to say whether a photograph is not in focus, because that's an important distinction. It is easy to say if a photograph is sharp or not. And so, you know, people who are kind of, let's say less comfortable with the artistic side of photography, feel happy sitting in an area where they can define how good or bad their image is by things that they can demonstratively say to it, say, look, you cannot argue that that is not sharp. Now that brings us on to that quote by Adam's where he says that there is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. I think this is important to remember here that it doesn't matter if your photograph is sharp. If it's a rubbish photograph, it's not going to be saved. So much of my work at Photoshop wasn't particularly good, but because it was sharp, you know, I thought, wow, this is this is pretty great. And there was a thing with sharpness of Photoshop. You start from first year, you know, you're doing all your own printing, and you make a full kind of size, you know, eight by 10 prints. And then you see all the second years who are built, you're printing their own stuff, and they're printing like 24 inch prints. And you go, wow, this is amazing. I want to do that too. So you get to second, you start printing these things. And after the the the thrill of having bigger prints has kind of worn off, you start to become dissatisfied with the image because you realize it's not as sharp as you would actually like it to be. And by the time you get to third year, you've gone in the opposite direction, you're now printing on these giant 30 inch 30 by 20 inch mounting boards, little almost contact size prints. You're trying to you're trying to make the image look as sharp as is possible. You know, that's kind of a ridiculous thing. You know, why is it that you know, we will come sharpness is a measure of how good a photograph is. Anyway, that's a little sort of diversion. But it is just kind of, you know, you need to sort of decide what the point of your image is. And I think at this point, you know, you kind it's useful to turn to examples. Because I'm sure at some by now, there are people going, you know, in the comments, or I hope there's people in the comments, you know, just so saying, Oh, but everything should be sharp. And if you don't need it to be sharp, then you can make it softer. And you go, Okay, all right, that seems like a lot of work to make it good and go bad. But I do understand your thinking, you know, if we roll out one another one of Ansel Adams is quite, I think it's an answer. But I've certainly told at the photo school that you can't make a good print from a bad negative. But you can make a bad print from a good negative. Right. So maybe there's two arguments that could go with mine because much. So if you're wanting something to be super sharp, especially like portraiture, because I often feel that's kind of where, you know, I certainly would want sharpness. If you look at somebody like Martin Schuller, right, so these, these are, I love these, these portraits. And when you do, you know, look at them and then you can see that they are exceptionally sharp, that they have a clarity to them, you know, that that leaps off the page. And you can imagine if these were printed big, and that's kind of I think the thing here, that they would still retain that hyper realism, because of the sharpness, right, when they were still when you were looking at them for maybe 10 feet away. Right. But then you turn to somebody like, you know, this is, this is a photographer called, and I've totally forgotten Joyce Tennyson. Don't you hate it when your mind just goes blank. And she has these very atmospheric, one would all must say pictorialist kind of photographs. And I have to be careful here, because some of these have, they have boobs in them. And YouTube doesn't like boobs. You know, it's like, you know, so anyway, so we would save me having to blow things out. So she has these, and if you're not familiar with Joyce Tennyson, go and look at her work. It is, it is stunning, right? I will put some more up on screen here, because it, I think I'm fairly good about kind of sort of peeling out how people make photographs and what they've used to construct them and put them together. But with Joyce's work, I find myself at a bit of a little bit of a loss. There's obviously some, some, you know, some long shutter speed kind of stuff going on. I hazard a guess that she's probably got one of these kind of soft focus lenses that were prevalent. There's, there's probably some, you know, some multiple exposure stuff. But this is, this is the joint. This is the fun of like, you know, some picking apart photographs. And so that's, you know, sort of like portraiture. If you were doing landscape photography, then you would have somebody like, oh, you guess, are these books again so heavy? Is somebody like Robert Adams? Now I love Robert Adams, okay? And when you look at his photographs, they have a, let's say, clarity to them, right? That they, they feel, because a lot of his work is about sort of, you know, man's effect on the, on the landscape. And when you look at photographs of Robert Adams and they have a sharpness to them. They're not super razor sharp because again, you know, we're talking about, you know, film stocks and lenses and stuff from years ago, but they are sharp in, let's call it relative terms, right? And they, you know, they, that conveys a certain feeling and mood with them. And then you have, there's a photographer that I was reading about who was, was making some very interesting discussions about using a cheap lens. Now I, I've often thought about these kind of ideas, but I was looking at this, this Articorin F stoppers and it summed up, I think, you know, what I find is lacking in a lot of modern, modern landscape photography. And the guy's called Andy Day, and he took these photographs out in, in a forest with a, I think it was like a 35mm lens that was like under 90 bucks or something. This is like a complete manual thing. And obviously when you shoot a wide open, it's going to get a bit mucky and there's a whole bunch of technical reasons about why that happens, which I'm not going to bore you with right now. But he talks about character in these photographs or do you say character, you know, records, floors. And I think that sort of sums it up. When I look at these images, they make me feel like I'm in a forest. You know, this morning I was out walking through a local heath, just because the weather is now slightly improving. And I missed that. And when I look at his photographs, they make me feel like I want to go walk there. They make me feel like I'm there. They, they, they give me that atmosphere that I get from really being there. Whereas if I look at photographs that are done by a lot of the modern, modern landscape photographers, where everything's like super sharp and, you know, and going back to the Group F64 and stuff as well, they don't encourage me. They don't invite me to go and explore the photograph. I can sort of look at, you know, an Ansel Adams print or somebody like that and go, oh, those are lovely tones. Wow, look at that. It's very precise. It's very sterile. But, you know, when you look at these images and, you know, Andy Day just obviously one example, but if you look at like toy photography, you know, the Holger cameras that, I don't know if anybody's ever had a Holger, but this is, this is my little Holger from, oh, Jesus, like 20 years old now. But this is, this is a wonderful toy. And it is a toy. That's plastic. You know, it is, it is, it is not even remotely light-tight. And that's again part of the joy. It has two shutter speeds. It has a fast and a slow. It has guesstimation focusing. But the photographs that come out of that, you know, are, suddenly it was as far as I can send, atmospheric. That they remind me of places, they give me a sense of I want to be somewhere else. And if you want to experiment with trying to, you know, get in touch with soft focus without with, you know, going away from shoppers and see what happens, then Holger is a really good thing. You could try a lens baby. So lens babies are these fancy lenses that sort of, they do all sorts of effects like tilt shifts and what have you. But see what happens. You know, sharpness in photography is a, it, you need, there are certain sections when you need it, but, but expression in photography, if this is your thing, if you find that being, that having this idea that sharpness trumps everything else, and you find that stiltifying, then, then go, takes it. This, this rejuvenated my approach to photography. I, you know, I have, you know, I've got a window a couple of times where I was, I was thinking up and down. And buying this, I spent like two months, I just couldn't stop taking photographs, which was unfortunate because it takes media from that film, and, and it was kind of pricey, to get them all developed. But some of the results were rubbish, but some of them I really like, to go, go out there, take a risk, take a chance to, you know, see what happens on the softer side of photography. And, you know, maybe it will be the kickstart that you are thinking about that will help you in, to, to find a new way of expressing yourself in your pictures. If you'd like to find out more about Edward Steichen, who is one of the best photographers, most influential photographers of all time, then check this video out over here. He is stunning. I know you're going to love it. Thank you ever so much for watching and I will see you again soon.